


it was a red scarf semester

by ikeracity



Series: colors [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Bets, Charles Is a Darling, Erik is a bit of a bastard, M/M, Mutant Politics, Mutant Rights, ambiguous ending, so don't be too mad?, with a sequel in the works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 03:10:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/819283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikeracity/pseuds/ikeracity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Erik makes a bet that he can get into Charles Xavier's pants before the semester ends, he doesn't expect Charles to resist quite so much. And he doesn't expect Charles to change everything he thought he knew about mutants, friendship, and love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it was a red scarf semester

**Author's Note:**

  * For [treasuredleisure](https://archiveofourown.org/users/treasuredleisure/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Point Between Rage and Serenades](https://archiveofourown.org/works/657929) by [treasuredleisure](https://archiveofourown.org/users/treasuredleisure/pseuds/treasuredleisure). 



> Inspiration also drawn from [this](http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/9701.html?thread=21253861#t21253861) prompt.

“Fuck me.” 

“That can be arranged,” Sebastian said without looking up from his phone as Erik slid into the chair across from him. 

“I just failed my midterm. Dunn is an asshole,” Erik growled, raising his hand to signal the nearest waitress. She came over immediately, giving him a blatant once-over that he ignored. He ordered a beer and turned back to table with a scowl. “He knows shit about mutants. The fact that he’s teaching Mutant Studies is ridiculous.” 

“I told you not to take him,” Azazel said, his feet propped up on the table as he sipped a beer. “Told you to take Worthington.” 

Erik’s scowl deepened. “Worthington irritates the fuck out of me, and you know it.” 

Across the table, Janos snorted. “You just don’t like him because he comes from money.” 

“Hey, Erik likes _me_ well enough,” Sebastian said, raising his hand lazily. His gaze still hadn’t moved from his phone. Texting Emma probably. Their relationship was currently on the rocks, which meant Sebastian would be moody, Emma would be more prickly than usual, and there would be at least one week of passive-aggressive hissing at each other before they had hate sex and made up. In the four years Erik had known them, he’d never seen one of their breakups last. 

“I like you because you’re not a complete asshat with your money,” Erik told him. “Worthington funds those pacifist groups.” 

Sebastian’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “Integrationists.” 

“At least Dunn’s a separatist,” Azazel pointed out. “Even if he’s obviously mutantphobic.” 

“That’s the _one_ good thing about him,” Erik agreed, accepting his beer as the waitress set it down in front of him. She tried to catch his eye again, but Erik didn’t spare her a glance. He wasn’t in the mood for a fuck. He was more in the mood for a few drinks and then going home, that was all. Even if it was Friday night, he was too pissed off from Dunn’s class to focus on talking anyone into bed.

Azazel’s tail curled restlessly around the leg of his chair as he leaned back. “Hey, Janos has something that’ll put you in a better mood.” 

“I doubt it,” Erik grunted. He took a long, hard swallow of his beer before setting it back down on the table and glaring at the condensation on its glass surface. 

“No, listen,” Janos said, shifting forward to lean his elbows against the edge of the table. “You’re going to want to hear this. Remember last week?”

“What about last week?” Erik grumbled. He didn’t want to remember this morning, let alone last week. As far as he could recall, it had been a shitty seven days anyway. He’d a paper and three midterms piled in, one of which he’d failed. Fuck Dunn and his mutant prejudice. Fuck the university for even allowing him to teach Mutant Studies at all. 

“Last week at the bookstore. The kid working behind the counter? Remember that?” 

Oh. Yes, he remembered _that_ quite clearly. They’d dropped into the campus bookstore to get some supplementary supplies for the semester, and the boy behind the counter had been a charming idiot who hadn’t known how to work a cash register. Erik would have been seriously annoyed if he hadn’t been so busy staring at the boy’s lips, wondering what they’d taste like. The kid had apparently noticed his fixation because he’d winked and licked his lips before scanning in Erik’s books and binders. Erik hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away after that. Once it came time to pay, the boy hadn’t been able to get the cash register open, though he’d tried to rescan everything three times. He’d apologized again and again, everything sounding so terribly polite in that British accent of his. He’d been so puzzled by the machine, and Erik had found it hilarious. He’d taken pity on the kid after a while, pulling the drawer to the cash register open with a flick of his fingers. The boy’s eyes had shot wide open, and Erik had half-glared at him, daring him to comment. But he’d said nothing, only bagged Erik’s purchases, gave him a bright smile, and wished him a good day. No remark on Erik’s mutation, nothing. 

“Yeah, what about him?” Erik asked. 

Sebastian looked up at last. When he tossed his phone carelessly onto the table, Erik glanced over at him and said, “Trouble in paradise?”

“She’s sleeping over at a friend’s,” Sebastian said, clearly vexed. “But it doesn’t matter, she’ll be back. Anyway, let’s talk about this kid. I saw the way you were looking at him last week, you know. Not exactly subtle.” 

“He was pretty,” Erik said, a bit defensively. 

“He was,” Janos agreed. “So I kept an eye out for him. I mean, a kid who works at the on-campus bookstore? Figured he had to be a student here, in the work-studies program or something. So I poked around a bit.” 

Erik was curious despite himself. “And?” he prompted. 

“And I found out that his name’s Charles. Not much to know about him. New kid, I think.” Janos crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Good news though: he’s a mutant. I asked around with some of the underclassmen. I don’t know what he can do exactly, but he can do something.” 

A mutant. Despite himself, Erik perked up a bit. “Gay?”

Janos shrugged. “Not sure. Rumor is, he’s too good to sleep with anyone. Patricia Ronan told me he’s a fucking tease—huge flirt, but he never follows through. He hung out with her all last week. Clearly interested, you know? She kept asking him back to her apartment, but he turned her down every time. And he apparently flirts with all the guys in the library, too.” 

“Means you have a chance,” Sebastian said, quirking his eyebrow in Erik’s direction. “Mutant. Flirt. Possibly gay.” 

“Who said I wanted him?” Erik asked, taking a sip of his beer. 

Sebastian leveled a skeptical look at him. “I saw that kid, just like you did. He’s cute. What I’d give to fuck that. But you saw him first.” He shrugged. “So I’ll let you have him first. Just tell me how it is later so I know if it’s worth it or not.” 

“I’m not here to prime your fucks for you,” Erik said, annoyed. 

As usual, Sebastian gave him a dismissive wave. “Whatever, Erik. I still want him.” 

“And Emma?” 

Sebastian rolled his eyes. “We’re on a break. And even when I’m with her, you know we’re not exclusive.” 

“Right.” Erik traced his thumb through the condensation on the curved glass of his beer bottle. “Maybe.” 

_“Maybe?”_ Sebastian laughed. “What, you afraid you won’t be able to snag him?” 

Erik glowered indignantly at him. “That’s not it. You know that’s not it. I could have anyone I wanted.” 

“You could,” Janos agreed. “So why not Charles? He’s a sweet piece of ass.” 

“I don’t even know him,” Erik protested. 

“Weak excuse,” Sebastian said, grinning now. Apparently his dark mood had dissipated with the distraction of Erik’s matchmaking. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the house parties. I’ve seen you hook up with half a dozen people you’ve never seen before.” 

‘House parties.’ That was what Sebastian called the raves he held in his basement and backyard while his parents were away. Erik had to admit Sebastian was right; he could vaguely recall stumbling into dark rooms with another boy’s tongue stuck down his throat, his hand stuck down Erik’s pants. His one-night stands never left notes or numbers, and Erik never asked. The whole affair was fast and messy and impersonal, just how he preferred it. He liked the anonymity, liked how having sex with strangers was liberating, obligation-free as it was. If anything was stopping him, it wasn’t the fact that he didn’t know this Charles at all. 

“Maybe he _is_ scared,” Azazel said, his red skin going ruddier with amusement. 

“Fuck you,” Erik snapped. “I’m not scared.” 

Janos laughed. “Whatever you say, man.” 

“I’m _not._ What? You think I can’t get a kid like that into bed? Please.” Erik was aware of his own attractiveness. He didn’t always flaunt it, but he used it when he needed to. It was another tool to take advantage of, just like his abilities, just like any other resource he’d ever had. And he was good at using it, too. This Charles boy with a reputation of a flirty tease posed no challenge at all. 

“Then do it,” Azazel said. “Come on, a good fuck will take your mind off Dunn.” 

Sebastian nodded. “Azazel’s right.” 

Erik sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I don’t feel like a fuck right now.” 

“Not right now,” Sebastian said. “Tomorrow or something. Maybe he’ll come to the party at the end of the week.” 

“No.” Erik shook his head. “I don’t go for freshmen. Too complicated.” 

Sebastian laughed. “Complicated?” 

“You know what I’m talking about. They just got to college, they’re emotional and needy. It gets complicated.” Erik remembered his first year acutely. He’d been apart from his mother for the first time, alone in a place he didn’t really want to be, among people he didn’t know and didn’t trust. He’d had a miserable time of it until Sebastian Shaw had taken him under his wing in the second week of the semester, and they’d been nearly inseparable ever since. Sebastian was most of the reason why Erik hadn’t quit school entirely his freshman year, and he knew he hadn’t made it easy on Sebastian to befriend him. He’d been angry, moody, and generally bad company. But Sebastian had persevered, and eventually, Erik had come around. He knew what being a freshman was like, and he didn’t want to get tangled up in that. He wasn’t Sebastian, and there was no way he was going to run around taking up with lost freshmen who probably had more issues than he had any patience to handle. 

Across the table, Sebastian smirked at him as he raised his beer to his lips. After a long swallow, he carefully set the bottle back down in the ring of condensation it had formed on the tabletop and said, “Doesn’t need to be complicated. Just make it clear it’s a one-time thing, that’s all. It isn’t quantum mechanics, Erik.” 

“Like you know jack shit about quantum mechanics,” Erik shot back. He shook his head. “Why would I go after a freshman when I could get someone my age for less fuss?” 

Sebastian rolled his eyes. “In case you haven’t noticed, Erik, sometimes the chase is half the fun.” 

“So unless you’re scared…” Janos said, a shit-eating grin on his face. 

Erik glared at him. “I have better things to do with my time than try to find some kid and talk him into my bed.” 

Azazel snorted. “You don’t think you can do it.” 

Erik narrowed his eyes and twisted the zipper on Azazel’s jacket with a clench of his fingers. “Don’t try me tonight.” 

“Or you’ll what?” Azazel sneered. “Come on, admit it. You’re scared you wouldn’t be able to. You’re scared the kid will turn you down. No shame in it. Just leave this Charles guy to me then.” 

“I’m not fucking scared!” Erik snarled. 

“Really?” Azazel’s smile took on a mean edge. “Sounds to me like you might be.” 

_“Fuck_ you.” 

“I’m thinking maybe you’re the one who needs to be fucked—”

Before Erik could even lunge in his direction, Sebastian kicked Azazel’s chair hard enough to unbalance him, causing him to grab for the table to avoid toppling over backwards. “Let’s play nice now,” Sebastian said coolly as he swirled the tip of his finger around the mouth of his beer bottle. “Look, Erik, it’d be fun. God knows you haven’t had much of a challenge lately. It has to be getting boring, all those easy fucks at the parties.” He leaned forward again, eyes intent on Erik’s. “I’ll even make you a bet. I bet you can’t get him to sleep with you before the semester ends.” 

Erik scoffed. Manipulation was Sebastian’s thing, but it was rarely so blatant. “Tempting. Really.” 

Sebastian arched an eyebrow. “Do I have to make it worth your while?” 

“Why the fuck do you care?” 

“It’ll be interesting.” Sebastian gave him a lazy smile. “And maybe I want you to break the kid in before I take a turn.” 

“I don’t _break people in_ for you,” Erik growled. “Don’t be an ass.”

Sebastian brushed off that comment as if he’d barely heard it. “I can’t believe I have to provide incentive. You love knocking people down a peg. Sounds like Charles could stand to be knocked down a few pegs, if he thinks he’s too good to sleep with anyone.” He paused, and when Erik said nothing, added with a sigh, “What if I threw in that necklace?” 

“What necklace?”

“The one you were looking at last week.” Sebastian’s smile widened as Erik stilled. “Emma told me about it. Said you dragged her along to look at some necklaces for your mother. It’s her birthday soon, isn’t it?”

“In January,” Erik muttered. He’d only asked Emma to evaluate some jewelry for him on a whim. There was no way he had the money to buy any of the pieces. He barely had enough money to cover tuition and his meals from week to week. 

“You’ve got a little over three months then,” Sebastian remarked. “Enough time for you to take a tumble with the kid. You get him to sleep with you, bring us proof, and I’ll buy that necklace for you.” He sprawled back in his chair, slinging one arm around its low back. “It’s only—what—two thousand dollars?” 

Erik glared at his beer. “Three thousand.” 

“Three. Done.” 

Erik gave him a sidelong look, trying not to feel the stirrings of hope. He’d all but given up a necklace as a potential present. Normally, from year to year, he crafted his mother something out of metal and took her out to dinner for her birthday at the most expensive restaurant he could manage. This year, however, he’d wanted to do something special. She’d been sick nearly all year, after all, and when he’d seen those necklaces on display at the store, he’d thought they’d be perfect for cheering her up. She liked jewelry, though she didn’t own any piece that hadn’t come from a thrift shop or a lower-end jewelry store, mainly because they’d never indulged in such luxuries. But if anyone deserved a spot of extravagance, it was his mother. He’d done the math though and knew he couldn’t afford the necklace, not if he skipped meals every other day for the next three months. Three thousand dollars was ridiculously unrealistic for him. But it was pocket change for Sebastian. 

“You’d do that,” he said slowly, disbelievingly. “You’d buy me a necklace for my mother, and all I have to do is fuck this Charles kid.” 

“And bring proof,” Azazel added, his eyes bright with interest now. 

Erik made a face. “Like hell. I’m not recording anything.” 

Janos rolled his eyes. “So unimaginative, Lehnsherr. There are other ways of getting proof.” 

“Like what?”

“Like…” Janos paused. 

“Bring us his underwear,” Sebastian suggested with a sly smile. “Boxers or briefs. I’ll trade you the necklace for them. Is that a deal?”

Erik scrutinized him for a long moment, sure there had to be a catch here somewhere. Sebastian was giving up that necklace for nothing. Even if this Charles boy was as high-and-mighty as Janos had said, Erik doubted it would take much to lure him into bed. He’d seen more than once that it was the ones that protested the most who wanted to fuck hardest, once they let themselves be persuaded. And Erik could be _very_ good at persuasion. If the kid was as much of a flirt as Janos had said, then perfect. Erik might not even have to string two words together, since Charles would probably talk himself into Erik’s bed. He didn’t see the challenge in this proposition. But if Sebastian was offering, he’d have to be a fool to refuse. 

He shrugged and clinked his beer bottle against Sebastian’s. “Yeah, fine. Deal.”

* * *

He dropped by the bookstore on Monday after class, hoping to find Charles behind the register. Instead, a tall, lanky kid who had thick glasses that kept sliding down his nose and dark blue eyes that darted away nervously whenever someone made eye contact was manning it. He was wearing an expression that said that he hoped desperately that no one would ask him anything. Erik searched around the store briefly to see if Charles was helping out with the shelves. When he didn’t spot him, he headed over to the counter, ducking under the line dividers since there was no one waiting to check out.

The boy behind the counter gave him a tentative smile as he approached. “How can I help you?” 

“Hey…” He glanced at the kid’s nametag. “…Hank. I was wondering if you knew a guy that works here. Charles?” 

Recognition flashed across Hank’s face. “Oh. Charles? Yeah, I know him. He doesn’t, um, he doesn’t actually work here.” 

Erik’s brow furrowed. “What? I just saw him last week. He was working the register.” 

Hank looked confused for a handful of seconds until realization set in. “Oh! He was filling in for me last week. I had to make up one of my labs and I couldn’t find anyone to cover for me so he offered to take my shift for the day.” 

Well, that would explain why Charles hadn’t had the faintest clue how to operate a cash register. Erik asked, “Do you know where I could find him then?” 

Hank cleared his throat and pushed his glasses quickly up his nose. “Well, it’s Tuesday, and he’s usually in the library Tuesday afternoons. He tutors people in one of the study rooms on the second floor.” 

“Tutors people?”

“He does entry-level physics, biology, genetics, chemistry—sciences mostly,” Hank explained. “Maybe some more advanced stuff, too. I’m not sure.” 

Erik blinked. “He sounds…smart.” When Erik had seen Charles last week, he hadn’t thought the boy had looked particularly nerdy. He’d had on jeans and a thick blue sweater that had blotted out most of his figure, but Erik had still thought he’d looked immensely fuckable. He’d looked like a kid with social potential, not like someone who slept in the library and inhaled textbooks. 

Hank nodded, a small, fond smile appearing on his lips. “Yeah, he’s a genius. He’s helping me out with my thesis right now.” 

“Thesis?” Erik echoed in surprise. “Are you a freshman?”

Hank shook his head. “Junior.” 

“And Charles?” If he was helping Hank out, then was he a junior, too? A senior even? Impossible. He couldn’t have been a day over eighteen. 

“Charles is a grad student,” Hank answered. “He’s working on his PhD. His second one, I think.” 

Erik stared at him. _“Second?_ How old _is_ he?” 

“Um, twenty.” 

Twenty. Holy shit. Erik thought suddenly, wildly, that Charles was far, far out of his league. But no—he shook away the idea. He couldn’t afford to think that way. His mother’s necklace was at stake here, and his own pride. Besides, it wasn’t as if he was going to _date_ the kid. “So…library, you said?”

“Yeah.” Hank hesitated, then added, “He might be with someone else though.” 

“That’s fine. I’ll wait.”

Erik checked his watch as he left the bookstore. 4:13. The Brotherhood meeting didn’t start until seven, so he had time to get to the library, find Charles, and decide on what to do from there. He figured he’d scope Charles out a bit first, see what he liked and what he didn’t, get a feel for what he’d respond to. Erik was fairly confident in his ability to think on his feet. He could flirt. He thought he was rather good at it. The number of people that had paraded through his bed at his leisure was testament enough to that. 

The weather was getting a little nippy, so he turned up the collar of his jacket and headed over to the library. It was across campus from the bookstore, so it took him nearly twenty minutes to get there, and by the time he arrived, his hair was out of sorts from the wind and his cheeks were flushed from the cold. He combed down his hair with his fingers as he climbed the stairs to the second floor. The library was relatively empty this afternoon, what with most of the midterms having passed already. There were clusters of students working quietly at the tables, one group gathered around a white board scribbled over with equations, and a few kids browsing the shelves. 

Bypassing the main area, Erik made for the hall behind the bookshelves where the study rooms were located. He glanced through the small, square windows in the doors as he passed them, searching for Charles’s face. On instinct, he felt out the metal in the area: a watch here, a belt buckle there, pens and the spirals on notebooks. If he counted from those objects alone, then eight of the twenty rooms were currently occupied. He skipped over the ones that weren’t, continuing until finally he peered through one of the windows and spotted Charles sitting alone at the table in the cramped room, thumbing through a textbook, an uncapped highlighter clenched between his teeth and a pen gripped in his fingers, jotting down notes in a notepad. He paused for a moment, just watching Charles work, admiring the curve of his lips around that highlighter and the way he curled his left leg around the chair leg. What would those legs look like, curled around Erik’s waist? Erik grinned at the thought. Only one way to find out. 

He knocked on the door, and Charles started in his seat. He swiveled around, his eyes widening when he saw Erik at the door. Taking the highlighter from his mouth, he capped it, set it down, and got up to open the door hurriedly. “Hi. Um. Can I help you?” 

“We met the other day,” Erik said. “At the bookstore.” 

“Right. Yeah. I know.” Charles smiled a bit embarrassedly. “Sorry about the hassle. To be honest, it was my first time. I’d never touched a cash register before in my life.” 

“I heard.” At Charles’s raised eyebrows, Erik said, “Hank told me.” 

“Ah. You know Hank?”

“Not really.” Erik put on one of his softer smiles, keeping the exposed teeth to a minimum. “So your name is Charles?” 

“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t even introduce myself.” Charles thrust his hand out with a cheery grin. “Yes, I’m Charles Xavier. Nice to meet you…”

“Erik Lehnsherr.” He shook Charles’s hand firmly, letting his touch linger a little longer than necessary. He was rewarded by the slight arch of Charles’s eyebrows, and by the considering look that entered Charles’s eyes. Erik’s smile widened minutely. Easy. Sebastian was going to regret making this bet. 

“Did you come for tutoring then?” Charles asked. “I’m usually done by five, but I could wait a little if you really needed help.” 

It felt too soon to ask Charles out already, so Erik nodded. Getting to know him a bit would probably be a wise move. “Yeah. Mostly just some general physics things, if you do that kind of thing.” 

“Of course.” Charles stepped back from the door. “Come in and sit down.” 

Instead of taking one of the chairs opposite Charles’s, Erik settled in the one directly beside him. He scanned over the papers already scattered across the table. Some of them looked to be articles from science journals, and others looked like a collection of various pages scanned from books. 

“Sorry about the mess,” Charles said, sweeping the papers together as he sat down. “I was working while I waited for someone to come by.” 

“You’re here every Tuesday?” Erik asked. 

Charles nodded. “Tuesdays and Thursdays, from three to five. I used to do Fridays as well, but my schedule’s gotten a bit hectic lately.” He cleared off a space, shoved his backpack across the table, and flipped to a clean page in his notebook. “Do you have anything in particular that you want to work on?” 

After a moment of consideration, Erik said, “Fluids,” even though he already knew fluid mechanics so well he could solve problems in his sleep. Still, when Charles had him write out a few standard equations, he pretended to think hard for a long while and then flubbed a couple of variables here and there. Charles took the paper from him when he was finished and looked it over. He corrected the equations quickly and effortlessly, catching each mistake with barely a pause. He was good, Erik thought with some surprise. He hadn’t even needed to consult any reference sheets to refresh his memory. 

“Well, you’re not bad off,” Charles said when he was done. He pushed the page back to Erik. “Memorizing these equations would do you a world of good. I can’t help you much there. Did you want to try some practice problems?” 

Erik shrugged. “Sure.” Then he hesitated as a thought struck him. “How much do you charge? Hourly?” 

Charles shot him a surprised look. “I don’t charge. This is free.” 

“Oh. Then you wouldn’t mind if I stayed a little longer?” Erik let a hint of uncertainty show in his expression. “To work on some problems?” 

“Of course not,” Charles said without hesitation. “I’ve got nothing planned after this anyway.” 

He noticed the way Charles’s eyes lingered on his face and had to bite down on his lip to keep from smiling. Fifteen minutes in and Charles was staring at him already. He wouldn’t need the rest of the semester to get this kid into his bed. In fact, he’d be surprised if Charles wasn’t halfway there by tonight. 

Charles wrote out a few simple fluid pressure questions, which Erik pretended to struggle over. After a couple of minutes, Charles pulled his chair a little closer so he could lean over and point out errors as Erik worked. When their knees brushed, Erik paused and glanced swiftly over at Charles, wondering if he would move away. But Charles didn’t budge. If anything, he pressed in just a bit closer, his eyes darting up to Erik’s for a fraction of a second before returning to the problem on the page. Erik took a deep breath and kept writing, though it took an effort not to close the distance between their lips already. They were sitting near enough to each other that Erik would only have to turn his head and push forward three or four inches to make contact. Clearly Charles wanted it; he kept smiling, though Erik hadn’t said anything remotely humorous, and his quick glances in Erik’s direction were anything but subtle. Such a small space between them, Erik thought. He could lean down right now. He could put his hand on Charles’s knee, squeeze his thigh, rub up and up until—

Charles jerked. It was a full-body flinch away from Erik, the pressure of his leg against Erik’s suddenly gone. He met Erik’s eyes, his expression filled with incredulous amusement. “Well. That’s certainly forward of you.” 

Erik blinked, perplexed. “What?”

Charles set down his pen. “Sorry, I should have told you this from the beginning: I’m a mutant.” 

“Yeah, I know.” 

“You know?” 

“I heard,” Erik answered. 

“Oh.” Charles looked thrown. “Usually people are little more wary about that.” 

“Why would I be?” Erik raised his hand and floated Charles’s pen up by its metal cap. He set it spinning with a wiggle of his fingers, feeling a pang of pleased pride at the way Charles’s eyes shot wide. 

“I nearly forgot. You’re a mutant as well, aren’t you?” Charles breathed, sounding delighted. 

Erik wordlessly drifted the pen over to him, waited until he held out his hand, and then dropped it in his palm. As his fingers curled warmly around the metal, Charles grinned, his eyes lighting up with wonder, as if Erik had just moved a building and not just a slim writing utensil. “That’s amazing! What can you do? Telekinesis?”

“No, metal. I can sense metal around me and move it.” 

“That’s marvelous!” 

Charles sounded genuinely awed. Erik had to resist the urge to preen a bit at the attention. Instead he asked, partly to keep the conversation moving, partly out of real curiosity, “So what can you do?” 

“Oh.” Charles made a vague gesture at his head. “I’m a telepath.” 

Erik froze. “A…” 

“Telepath.” A bit of hesitancy crept into Charles’s tone. “You know, I can read your thoughts. That’s why earlier—when you were thinking about touching me—it startled me, is all.” His eyes turned cautious as he looked over at Erik. “I know it can make people uncomfortable to be around telepaths, and I’d understand, of course, if you felt the same…” 

Still, there was a trace of hope in his voice, a hint of optimism. Erik knew how difficult it was to be a mutant in this human-dominated society. Even with the gradual advances in equality that mutants had made over the years, even with the continued growth of mutant tolerance and acceptance by humans nationwide, discrimination against those with the X-gene was still prevalent everywhere from daycares all the way to nursing homes. But no matter how segregated mutants remained from human society, telepaths were more shunned still. There was a reason for it: the idea of someone capable of poking around undetectably in people’s innermost private thoughts was frightening. Through Emma, Erik had seen the standard treatment of telepaths firsthand. She had always been set a little apart from everyone else, always guarded against and mistrustfully watched. Maybe that was why she always returned to Sebastian after every spat they ever had; he, at least, never treated her differently for her mutation. That was the good thing about Sebastian, Erik thought. He treated every mutant equally. 

Erik wasn’t particularly fond of telepaths. He had an uneasy friendship with Emma, mostly because she was so integral a part of Sebastian’s circle that it would have been impossible to avoid her if he’d tried. She claimed to keep her telepathy curbed to a minimum, but Erik had always gotten the feeling that she only ever let on half of what she actually knew. He didn’t quite trust her, but she’d never threatened him or invaded his privacy too much, as far as he knew. She’d even agreed to accompany him to the jewelry store last week when he’d needed a woman’s opinion for his mother’s gift. But still, he held her at arms’ length. 

Just as everyone had probably always held Charles at arms’ length. Telepathy was a stigma. Erik had seen some of Emma’s friends become instant strangers once they learned of her ability. He wondered how many friends Charles had lost that way, because of his mutation. 

Erik held Charles’s gaze. He was uncomfortable with telepathy, yes. Of course he was. But he knew what Charles wanted to hear, so he forced a smile and said, “No, it’s fine.” 

A tiny, answering smile started at the corners of Charles’s lips. “Are you sure? I mean, I do my best to keep free of everyone’s minds. The only reason I saw what you were thinking earlier was because we were touching. Physical contact makes it easier for thoughts to slip through. But I’m working on it.” 

He sounded painfully earnest, as if he wanted nothing more in that instant than for Erik to believe. So Erik nodded and said warily, “You promise not to read my mind?”

Sensing acceptance, Charles grinned. “Of course. Your thoughts are yours alone. I would never intentionally pry without permission.” 

Erik didn’t let his smile waver, though he kept his mind carefully blank. “Okay.” 

“Okay?” Happy relief shone through Charles’s expression. “That’s one of the better reactions I’ve ever had to my telepathy. Usually, people are a little more guarded, you know? Once it ended in hysterics.”

 _Well,_ Erik thought before he could help himself, _I have my reasons._ Just as quickly as that thought came, he slapped it away, sneaking a quick glance at Charles’s face to check for a reaction. But Charles’s friendly smile didn’t falter. Perhaps he hadn’t heard the thought after all. Perhaps he really wasn’t reading Erik’s mind. 

Or perhaps he had the best poker face Erik had ever seen. Just to be safe, Erik pointedly didn’t think about Sebastian’s proposition from Friday night. 

“Your telepathy doesn’t matter to me,” he said, picking up his pen again and beginning to write Bernoulli’s equation at the bottom of the page. “Is it v or v squared?”

Charles regarded him with an indecipherable look for a long moment. Then, a smile still tugging at his lips, he glanced down at the paper and answered, “It’s velocity squared. And don’t forget to halve both sides.” 

They spent another hour going over problems, slowly progressing to more complicated ones once Erik feigned epiphanies on the simpler concepts. Charles kept glancing at him out of the corner of his eye, kept sitting a little closer than necessary. He made a couple of horrible physics jokes and called Erik’s handwriting “groovy,” of all things. Erik couldn’t even stifle his snicker at that. _Groovy._ Really? His scoff earned him a rapid-fire lecture on how “groovy” was a perfectly acceptable adjective, even downright complimentary, despite the day and age. When Erik laughed again, Charles glared hard at him, though there was no heat behind his eyes, only good-humored exasperation. He liked Erik. It was so obvious, and Erik thought, _This is so easy._

They had to have been dancing around each other for over an hour now. Charles’s glances weren’t even subtle anymore, lingering longer and longer each time. More than once, he looked as if he were about to say something, but before he did, he seemed to think better of it and shut his mouth. Content to bide his time, Erik focused on the problems at hand, working through them slowly at first, then more quickly once he got bored. When he finished the one problem Charles had given him on a steady state scenario, he glanced up to find Charles watching him intently, his eyes bright. Without a word, Erik leaned forward and kissed him hard. 

Charles lurched backwards so quickly he nearly fell out of his chair. _“What—”_

Erik reached out and squeezed his knee. “Come on. You’ve been staring at me this whole time. Don’t tell me you don’t want this.” 

“Erik!” He sounded scandalized. Ignoring him, Erik ran his hand up Charles’s thigh, tracing a path outward to his hip. When he hooked two fingers into the waistband of Charles’s jeans, Charles leaped from his seat, his eyes wide. “What are you _doing?”_

He looked very nearly upset. Erik blinked uncomprehendingly at him. “You’ve been staring at me. You want…Doesn’t that mean…” 

_“No,”_ Charles snapped vehemently, understanding what he had left unsaid. “That doesn’t mean…” He took a breath, his brows knitting together in consternation. “Sorry, do you do this to anyone who looks at you for longer than five seconds?” 

Confused at his acerbic tone, Erik shook his head slowly. “No, of course not. I just…” He thought he’d been reading Charles correctly. Had he misjudged? Mistimed the whole thing? 

Charles reached over and started to clear the table, shoving his notebook and pens into his backpack. Erik watched him, baffled. When the table was empty except for the couple of sheets of scratch paper that Erik had been working on, Charles slung his backpack onto one shoulder and marched to the door. Opening it, he turned and said, clearly irritated, “Nice meeting you, Erik. You’re welcome to come by if you’ve got real questions. But if you’re looking for a fling, you’re going to have to find it elsewhere. Good day.” 

With that, he was gone. Erik gaped after him for a long minute, wondering what the hell had just happened. Things had been going according to plan. He’d met Charles. He’d struck up a conversation, spent nearly an hour in his company, read all the signals of interest on Charles’s part. He’d made a move and Charles had…coldly rejected him. Erik couldn’t remember ever being snubbed like this before. He’d thought for sure that Charles would reciprocate once he initiated things, except Charles had closed off and walked away. What the fuck? 

He let out a long sigh and scrubbed a hand through his hair. It looked like he’d have to rethink his strategy. 

Maybe winning this bet would be a little more difficult than he’d thought.

* * *

He camped out by the study rooms on Thursday afternoon, waiting for Charles to show. He’d found a handful of paperclips scattered around the bookshelves and set them orbiting through his spread fingers. The steady flow of motion was hypnotic, and he nearly dozed off leaning against the hallway wall. Before he could, he felt someone’s watch approaching, making its way down the long corridor formed by the bookshelves, turning the corner, making a beeline for the same room Charles had used on Tuesday. A moment later, Charles himself came into view, emerging from the shelves with an armful of books.

Letting the paperclips clatter to the ground, Erik pushed off the wall immediately and headed over. When Charles spotted him, he stopped, eyes narrowing. “Erik.” 

“Charles.” Erik took two of the heavier-looking books off the top of the load. “Here, let me help. Are you going in?” He gestured to the study room. 

Charles hesitated a moment before nodding. Erik preceded him in, setting the books on the tabletop as Charles did the same with his stack. Charles dropped his backpack to the floor with a heavy thud and then stood there for a moment, regarding Erik with a guarded yet curious look.

Finally, he said, “What are you here for today?”

Erik closed the door with a wave of his hand. Then he adopted his most contrite expression and said, “I wanted to apologize. Clearly, I misunderstood you on Tuesday.” 

“Misunderstood me.” Charles pulled out the nearest chair and sat down. He waited until Erik did the same on the opposite side of the table before crossing his arms and leveling a questioning stare at him. “What exactly gave you the idea that that was what I wanted?” 

Erik frowned. “You kept looking at me. And when our knees touched, you didn’t move away.” Those were undeniable signals in Erik’s mind. Signals Charles had been _interested._

But Charles shook his head. “Look, Erik, that’s not what I meant. I admit, I was…” He glanced away, a bit of pink tingeing his cheeks. “I _was_ flirting, but not because I wanted you to kiss me, or…or touch me. Not then.” 

Erik couldn’t hide his confusion. What else could flirting _mean?_

Charles sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m sorry if you thought that’s what I…if that’s the impression I was giving off. But it’s not what I wanted.” 

“Then what _did_ you want?” Erik asked, thoroughly perplexed. 

“I was…” Charles laughed shortly. “I was rather hoping you’d ask me to coffee sometime. Or at least ask for my number.” 

His mind went blank with surprise. Coffee? Like a _date?_

“Obviously, I was wildly off base there,” Charles continued. He bent down to unzip his backpack, withdrawing his spiral notebook and his pen and putting them both of the table. His tone hardened slightly as he added, “And so were you, for that matter. Like I said, if you’re looking for a fling, you’re going to have to look elsewhere.” 

Erik considered him for a long moment. Then, without thinking, he said, “Would you like to have coffee with me then?” 

Charles stilled. “What?”

“Coffee,” Erik repeated. The longer he thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. Giving up now was unacceptable. That would mean forfeiting the bet, and Erik had never forfeited anything in his life. But if the direct approach wasn’t going to work, then he was perfectly willing to play it Charles’s way. “When are you free?”

Charles stared at him. “I…what?” 

“How about now?”

“Now? No, I can’t. I just got here.” 

“Come on,” Erik wheedled. “You can miss one session. There’s a good coffee shop only a couple of blocks away.” He tried for an encouraging, eager grin. “They make a great café latte.” 

For a moment, Charles only stared at him, clearly confused. Finally, he said, “You really want to get coffee?”

Erik nodded. “Yeah. Come on. It’ll be on me.” 

He was afraid for a second that Charles would refuse. Was he reading Erik’s mind even now? Was he still put off by what had happened on Tuesday? But then a slow, hesitant smile spread across Charles’s face. “Well then,” he said with a huff. “I suppose it’d be all right. Let me just text some of my regulars and let them know I won’t be here.” 

“Good.” Erik let his grin widen and stepped back from the table as Charles fired off a handful of texts and repacked his things. Then he went to pick up his books, but Erik shooed him off and hoisted them up in his arms. Peering down at the first title, he asked, “What are these for?”

“Research for my dissertation,” Charles replied. “Biophysics, specifically.”

Right. Charles was working on a PhD. The surprise and admiration that flashed across Erik’s face weren’t faked in the slightest. “Hank told me you were working on your second one.” 

Charles nodded and led the way out of the study room. “That’s right.” 

“You’re a genius then.” 

Charles laughed. “Hank likes to call me that, yeah. But he’s just as intelligent as I am, if not more so. He just finds it difficult to interact with others sometimes. Shy sort, you know? Did you know he graduated from Duke at age sixteen?”

It wasn’t Hank Erik wanted to hear about. “And you?”

“What?”

“Where did you graduate from?” 

“Oh. Harvard. I hopped across to Yale for my first PhD, and here I am now.” 

Twenty. _Twenty_ years old and he’d already graduated from Harvard, gotten a PhD from Yale, and was here now, working on another dissertation. Erik’s head spun a little. “You’re…a little too smart to be talking to me, I think,” he said finally. 

Charles laughed. “Don’t worry, Erik, I can speak plebian.” His grin was bright as they headed down the stairs to the first floor. “Really though, I just work hard and I’m fortunate to have an excellent memory.”

“Still. That’s…” Hard to believe? Incredible? “…cool. What was your first PhD in?” 

“Genetics,” Charles answered. “I’ve always been fascinated by that, for obvious reasons.”

Erik sent him a swift glance. “About your telepathy…” 

Charles anticipated the rest of his question. “I’m not reading your mind, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ve got rules, you know.” 

“Rules?”

“I won’t read your mind without your permission. Sometimes I slip, and I apologize for that beforehand. But I would never invade your privacy on purpose.” 

Emma hadn’t ever made such extensive promises. She was never shy about using her telepathy, never apologetic about it. But here Charles was, limiting himself voluntarily. Erik wondered why the hell he’d do that. If Erik had been born with telepathy, he’d have damn well used it. But maybe that was his ploy: claiming to have principles to put people at ease, all the while slipping through thoughts as easily and undetectably as a shadow in the night. No, Erik wouldn’t be fooled by empty guarantees like that. He’d have to watch his mind around Charles, keep his thoughts close. 

“Good,” he said aloud. “Thanks.” 

Charles glanced at him. “Usually there’s a little more fuss than that. People don’t tend to take my words at face value.” 

Erik shrugged. “I heard you. I’m still not sure I trust you to keep them though.” 

Charles laughed. “Fair enough. That’s not the worst response I’ve ever gotten. Here, drop those books off at the counter before we leave. I’ll just re-check them out later.” 

Erik obliged, waiting as Charles chatted briefly with the librarian behind the counter. She was young, probably in her late twenties, and it was immediately obvious that she had something of a massive crush on Charles. She couldn’t keep her eyes off him as she scanned in his books and set them on the nearby cart to be re-shelved later, and when he asked after a book he’d put on hold, she smiled warmly at him before leaving to personally check the carts in the back to see if any copies had been returned. 

Erik raised his eyebrow. “She likes you.” 

“She does,” Charles agreed. 

“She’s pretty, too.” 

“Yes, she is.” 

As Charles leaned against the counter, Erik snuck a glance at his ass. It was as gorgeous as the rest of him, and Erik wanted to reach out and touch it, to cup it in his hand and pull Charles flush against him. Instantly, he tried to shut away those thoughts, in case Charles was eavesdropping. But the telepath didn’t react, not like he had on Tuesday. He only drummed his fingers against the counter, absently looking over a pamphlet describing the library’s self-checkout system and the locations of the new printers and scanners. 

Erik glanced toward the back room, where he could see the librarian through the window. She was slowly searching through the carts, one shelf at a time. “She likes you,” he repeated.

“Yes, I’m aware.” 

“And you…?” 

“What?” Charles followed his gaze to the girl, then laughed. “No. She’s a little old for me, I think. We just engage in a spot of harmless flirting, that’s all.” 

That wasn’t _all_ to her, Erik thought. But he said nothing more. If Charles wasn’t going to take this opportunity with a pretty, willing woman, then Erik wasn’t going to intervene. It seemed like a waste, but at least the girl wouldn’t be competition. 

A few minutes later, she returned and told Charles apologetically that it looked as if all the copies were still out. He thanked her, flashed her a brilliant smile that made her blush, and then took his leave. 

Erik shot him a quizzical glance as they left. “Why do you do that?”

Charles shoved his hands into his pockets as they got outside. “Do what?” he asked, trying to comb his hair back down as the wind whipped at it. 

“Flirt if you’re not going to follow through.” What had Janos called him? A fucking tease? Erik was beginning to see how that might be true. 

Charles looked confused. “Harmless flirting, I said. I’m being friendly.” 

“Stringing people along? That’s being friendly?” 

Charles stopped. “I’m not stringing anybody along.” 

Erik stopped, too, and scoffed. “So what’s that with the librarian?” 

“Jane and I are friends,” Charles replied, his brow furrowing. “I’m naturally…I don’t mean for it to mean anything. Like I said, I’m being friendly.” 

“What was that on Tuesday then?” Erik pressed. 

“Well, I’m following through now, aren’t I?” Charles asked, obviously puzzled. 

No, he wasn’t, not quite in the way Erik wanted at least. But coffee was a step forward. So Erik just shrugged and let the subject drop. He could sense Charles’s confusion as they headed down the street, but they let the conversation fade away. Erik led the way in silence to the small coffee shop nestled between a Papa John’s and the campus spirit wear store. It was crowded as usual, but they managed to squeeze in and snag a table in the back corner underneath an enormous, rainbow-colored palm tree lamp. 

“You stay here to save the table, and I’ll stand in line and get our drinks,” Erik said as Charles took the seat on the left. “What do you want?”

Charles peered over his shoulder at the menu written in chalk above the registers. “I’ll have…a café mocha please. How much is that?” 

He started to pull out his wallet, but Erik shook his head. “I’ll get it. Stay here.” 

He spun on his heel and joined the line before Charles could protest. There were maybe ten or twelve people ahead of him, but he knew that the staff here worked quickly and efficiently so the wait wouldn’t be too long. He pulled out his phone to pass the time and saw that he had a message from Azazel. 

_have u even talked to the kid yet_

Erik smirked. Talked to him? He was on a fucking date with him. _busy. talk later,_ he sent back. With any luck, he’d be doing more than talking with Charles soon enough. This date had to lead somewhere, didn’t it? There was an inevitable conclusion, and the only question was his place or Charles’s. Hopefully Charles’s. It’d spare them the possibility of Sebastian or the others walking in on them. 

By the time he’d ordered the drinks, paid, and collected them by the counter, Charles had pulled out his notebook and was scribbling something down. He glanced up as Erik sat down across from him and murmured a thanks as Erik handed him his mocha. 

“What are you writing?” Erik asked after a moment, tilting his head to try to read the upside-down words. 

Charles grinned ruefully. “It’s silly. A bit self-indulgent really.” 

“Try me.” 

Biting his lip, Charles spun the notebook around and pushed it across the table. Erik took a sip of his coffee before scanning over what Charles had written. What he saw there made his brows draw together in surprise. “Is this…” 

“A rebuttal,” Charles explained, tapping his pen restlessly against the tabletop. “You know there’s this group on campus—the Brotherhood?” 

Did he know it? Erik nearly laughed. He nodded slowly. “Yeah, I might have heard of it.” 

“Mutant-only membership,” Charles said. “Separatists. They want mutants to pull away from human society entirely. They have a newsletter here on campus.”

“The Manifesto.” 

“That’s right.” Charles grimaced. “More of a tabloid than a manifesto, really. They sensationalize a lot of the events around the country, twist things to suit their views. I’ve been reading some of the issues since the beginning of the semester. It’s quite harsh stuff. No wonder the student body is so conflicted in the mutant debate, when polarizing writing like this exists on campus.” 

Erik had to clench his teeth to keep from spitting out the first thing that came to mind. So Charles was an integrationist. Well, fucking wonderful. Part of Erik wanted to get up right then and walk away. He had no patience for people who promoted coexistence, people who were naïve enough to believe that such a policy was possible. It baffled him that people couldn’t see the inescapable future: mutants would grow in strength and number, the humans would sink deeper into their fear and into their anger, and their hatred would lead to violence. Enforced segregation was the only thing that would protect mutantkind now. They had to separate before the humans’ opinions festered and turned against them. Sebastian had showed Erik that truth, when he had first invited Erik into his circle four years ago. Sometimes Erik thought that the members of the Brotherhood were the only sensible mutants to be found on campus. And here Charles was, wrinkling his nose in disdain at them. 

It took an effort to keep his voice even. “So you’re writing a rebuttal?”

Charles nodded, oblivious to the sudden, tight clench of Erik’s jaw. “There’s an editorial section in the back of every issue. I wasn’t going to write anything, but then I thought—well, why not? I have an opinion, and I have the right of share it. Of course, all the editorials I’ve read in there so far have unanimously praised the Manifesto and the Brotherhood. I wonder if they’d accept a dissenting opinion. If not, I can always send it over to the school-wide paper. They at least give the pretense of being unbiased.” 

Erik exhaled slowly through his nose. “What are you even objecting to?”

Charles laughed. “Oh, don’t even get me started. I could write dissertations on integrationist policies versus separatist ideals. Many of the ideas in the Manifesto are based on Benjamin Dalworth’s writings. I’m not sure why, since he was clearly a cautionary tale.” 

Erik gritted his teeth. All right. Be rational. He could stay calm about this. “To some people, Dalworth was a hero.” 

“A _hero?”_ Charles’s tone was sharp. “He blew up a federal building. Killed fifty-seven people.” 

“Fifty-seven _scientists,”_ Erik corrected, his hand clenching around his cup hard enough to leave indentations in the Styrofoam. “Scientists who had a hand in mutant experimentation.” 

“That was never proven.” 

“There were _documents,”_ Erik snapped. “Samples with mutant DNA!” 

“But no mutants,” Charles shot back. “Those samples could have come from anywhere. Hospital stores, blood banks—” 

Erik’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “Or from mutants themselves.” 

He knew these stories as if they were his own. He had been thirteen when he had started to read about the inexplicable disappearance of mutants across the country following the passing of the Mutant Registration Act, had begun to connect the dots just like everyone else, just like Dalworth had. After the bombing, there had been a public backlash against mutants. It had been chaos for a few days, with riots breaking out in the streets and the government trying desperately to regain order. Edie had sequestered Erik away, kept him home from school, afraid to let him out. They had sat in the living room nearly all week, watching the events play out on the television, waiting to hear if there would be all-out war. 

But eventually, somehow, things had calmed. A federal investigation had been ordered, and it had turned up evidence that no one had expected. The building Dalworth had targeted had been a series of laboratories focusing on the study of the X-gene. Samples of mutant blood had been found in the wreckage, along with detailed files of mutant patients and test subjects. But there had been no mutants. The official report had speculated that the scientists had illegally seized blood samples from hospitals or had staged blood drives to collect material to work with. But Erik and others had known the truth. Those missing mutants hadn’t kidnapped themselves, and the MRA had made them easier to track, easier to catch. Dalworth had figured that out, and he’d struck to weaken them, to expose the truth. Still, he was labeled a terrorist and denounced by humans and integrationist mutants alike. Sebastian always said disgustedly that it was shameful, that a man who had done a good thing for mutantkind was so universally hated. Erik thought he was right. 

“Not _proven,”_ Charles repeated, his frown deepening. “In this country, people are innocent until proven guilty. Those scientists might have been guilty of illegally harvesting those samples. But they didn’t deserve to die for it.” 

“And if they’d been experimenting on mutant subjects?” Erik demanded. “If they really had been kidnapping mutants off the streets and putting them in cages to be prodded at and tested on?”

“Then they were wrong,” Charles said firmly, “and they would deserve every punishment under the law. _Under the law._ Not what Dalworth did. What he did would never be right.” 

“And how long would it have taken for the government to take any action?” Erik asked. He’d spent half his teenage years studying every angle of this. He’d come into college with a bundle of confused impressions and ideas, and Sebastian had taken them and molded them into something coherent. Sebastian had given him belief. Anything Charles said, Erik had already argued it over with himself, on his way to the truth. “If Dalworth hadn’t called attention to the problem with what he did, how long would those scientists have gotten away with it? How many mutants might they have taken?”

“There’s still no proof—”

“The disappearances dropped off dramatically after Dalworth’s attack,” Erik interrupted. “From an average of 3,800 _a day_ to 1,200. And those are only the reported incidents. Who knows how many mutants were abducted under the MRA.” 

Charles shook his head. “Misrepresented statistics. Not all those disappearances could be credited to the scientists, if they even had a hand in them. More than half those disappearances involved children who turned out to be runaways. And people who criticize the MRA for being a tool for hunting mutants don’t take into account that the number of disappearances prior to its passing is roughly equal to the number afterwards. Going off the data, the MRA had little effect on mutant missing persons cases. The registration databases are supposed to be confidential anyway.”

 _“Supposed to be.”_ Erik scoffed. “Guarantees from the government aren’t exactly reassuring.” 

Charles gazed at him for a long moment, an indecipherable look on his face. Erik glared defiantly back, feeling the metal legs of his chair tremble ever-so-slightly in his anger. What did Charles have to say to that? Would he roll over and allow a human government to dictate his thoughts and actions, in true integrationist style? He hadn’t seemed like a pushover on Tuesday, but integrationists were notorious for their desire for _compromise._ That word meant defeat, Erik thought contemptuously. Nothing more. 

“You’re part of the Brotherhood, aren’t you?” Charles asked finally, his eyes considering. 

Erik froze. Fuck. He was supposed to be seducing Charles, not alienating him. This was supposed to be a date, just sharing light conversation over good coffee. How the hell had it turned to politics and the human-mutant debate? And now Charles knew his position, which happened to be the exact opposite of Charles’s own. They had argued, a bit heatedly. So this was likely it. Charles would politely excuse himself, leave Erik to his separatist ideals, and end any and all hopes of Erik winning this bet. 

Part of Erik thought good riddance. A greater part chafed at the idea of losing anything, at the prospect of having to face Sebastian and the others and explain what had happened and how he’d lost. And his mother’s _necklace._

But, to his shock, Charles’s frown flipped abruptly into a grin, chasing away the lines of disapproval on his face. “I’ve been wanting to speak to a member for a while. Have a little chat with one of you face-to-face, work out your reasoning. Fascinating debate, isn’t it? You have good points. You even used _statistics._ Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a conversational partner who quoted statistics at me?”

Erik gaped at him. “Wh…” 

Charles laughed at his expression. “What? You weren’t expecting me to leave, were you? Storm out the front door in a rage?” When Erik said nothing, Charles’s eyes widened. “Erik, I’m an adult. I’m perfectly capable of discussing things without throwing a tantrum when people don’t agree with me.” 

“How very…mature of you,” Erik managed. He’d seen these debates disintegrate into violence. He’d seen and participated in fistfights and screaming matches. He’d even spent one memorable night in a jail cell next to Sebastian, both of them sporting black eyes and spoiling for more. But he hadn’t met someone like Charles before, someone who looked almost excited to be challenged, to be tested. 

Before they could say anything more, Charles’s phone chimed. He dug it out of his pocket, glanced down at the message, and then gave Erik an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to cut this short. My sister’s having trouble with her new flat again. Honestly, she can’t even plug in the refrigerator on her own. That’s what she gets for relying on me for eleven years. Now that she’s moving into her own place, she hasn’t the faintest idea of how anything works.” Charles stood up, pushed in his chair, and gathered his things. “Thank you for the coffee, Erik, and for the conversation. I really enjoyed it.” 

“Yeah,” Erik said, standing too. “Um…” How could he keep this from ending here? What was the next natural segue that would take them one step closer to a bed, or at least the nearest flat surface? 

In the end, Charles decided for him. Taking out a pen, he reached for Erik’s hand and scribbled a line of digits across his palm. “Listen, I’d love to talk to you again, Erik. You know, to hear what you have to say about the human-mutant situation. Text me, or give me a ring when you’re free.” 

“Okay,” Erik said, distracted by the warm press of Charles’s fingers against his skin. “I will.” 

“Good. I look forward to it.” Charles released his hand and shouldered his backpack, his barely-touched mocha in hand. “I’ll see you around then, Erik.” 

“See you.” 

He watched until Charles disappeared out the door and then tracked his wristwatch down the street, all the way around the corner. When the metal signature grew too faint to follow, he let go of it and looked down at the numbers on his hand, a little dazed. He’d struck up an argument with Charles, he’d revealed himself to be a member of the group that Charles opposed so strongly he was writing an editorial against them—and he’d still gotten Charles’s number? 

His phone beeped. He pulled it out to find a text from Azazel: _still busy?_

 _no,_ he sent back. _just finished talking to charles actually._

There was a pause. Then: _no shit?! what happened?_

What had happened? It hadn’t been the date he’d envisioned, that was for sure. Not at all. But it couldn’t have been all bad, if Charles had given him his number in the end. He was still confused as to why Charles had done that, though. They’d clashed, pure and simple. And for some inexplicable reason, Charles had seemed to like it. 

With a sigh, he texted back his reply: _no fucking idea._

* * *

The next week, a small editorial in the op-ed section of the school newspaper caught everyone’s attention. At least, it caught Sebastian’s attention, and by extension, that of all the members of the Brotherhood. Sebastian read it half a dozen times and then ripped the paper in half, seething over the absolute _ignorance_ that existed on campus. As he shouted his tirades in the living room, Erik took a copy of the newspaper to his own room, shut the door, and flopped down on his belly in bed to read it.

The editorial was short, barely half a column, but it was concise and very clearly an attack on the ideas printed in the Manifesto. The author was listed as anonymous, but Erik knew who had written it. 

Almost unbidden, he pulled out his phone and scrolled down his contact list to C. He’d programmed in Charles’s number right after he’d gotten it, and now there it was in his directory, under CHARLES XAVIER. He hadn’t told Sebastian or the others about it yet. He’d figured it was too small a victory to get excited over. Now, he opened up a new text message to Charles and then paused, wondering what he should say. 

Finally, he settled on, _read your thing in the paper._ Before he could second-guess himself, he hit send and set his phone aside. 

Not even two minutes later, it beeped with a reply. _Is this Erik?_

Oh right. Charles didn’t have his number. _yes._

He’d barely put his phone down when it beeped again. _Hello, Erik! What did you think?_

Erik glanced at the article. The first time he’d read it, he’d been indignant. But the second time around, he’d tried to force himself to be more objective. He was an adult, just like Charles was. He was capable of considering all points of view without getting defensive. After the second read through, he’d found that a few of Charles’s points had some merit behind them, even if just a little. He might not agree with his ideas, but he thought he could see the line of Charles’s reasoning. 

_interesting,_ he texted back. 

Charles’s reply was lightning quick. _Interesting? Good?_

He couldn’t say good. He hadn’t liked what Charles had to say. _interesting. that’s all._

_That can’t be all. I’d be interested in hearing what you have to say. Are you free later today?_

Erik’s heart leaped. Another date? Could he be getting so lucky? _yeah._

_Coffee then? Same place at 4?_

He glanced at the clock. It was 2:36. _sounds good._

_Excellent. See you soon._

It was impossible to concentrate on schoolwork after that. Erik read Charles’s editorial over again, listened to the muffled sounds of Sebastian cursing at insufferable integrationists, and then unzipped his backpack with a wave of his hand and floated his laptop out and over to the bed. Popping it open, he pulled up a few web browsers and looked up the MRA, the Dalworth trial, and recent mutant-relevant policies. The first two he knew front and back, but he still glanced over a few summaries to refresh his memory. The last he’d been keeping up with but not thoroughly. He read a handful of articles, glanced over a forum filled with more vitriol from both humans and mutants than real information, and made a couple of notes. 

Then he stopped. What was he doing? Had he really spent the last hour seriously researching in order to prepare for a date that was only supposed to be a stepping stone toward winning this bet? He wasn’t really going to debate his side. He was going to work an angle, to talk Charles into sleeping with him. He had no need to be prepping like this, taking notes and trying to work out how to counter what Charles might say. He wasn’t trying to convince Charles of anything, except to drop his pants. 

Well, he supposed after a moment of consideration, it couldn’t hurt to be prepared. He’d already done the research. With any luck, Charles would be so impressed by Erik’s obvious commitment to his side that he’d maybe invite Erik back to his place to continue the conversation, and from there, it was only a short leap to bed. Erik knew he could seduce Charles, given time. He only needed an in. 

At 3:45, he slipped on a sweatshirt and left his room. At some point, Sebastian had disappeared into his own room, probably still fuming but doing so in private now. Azazel and Janos were nowhere to be seen, but their keys were gone, so Erik assumed they’d gone out. He headed out the door and down the three flights of stairs to the ground floor of his apartment building. The temperature had dropped again over the night, making it cold enough for scarves and gloves. Erik hadn’t thought to bring either. He debated taking his car or walking and decided that he could withstand walking across campus in the chill. 

When he arrived at the coffee shop, his hands were numb, and he couldn’t quite feel his face. He was greeted with a blast of warm air as he ducked into the shop. It was crowded again, and when he waded through the crowd, he saw that their table had been taken. Frowning, he pulled out his phone, but before he could even scroll to Charles’s name, he felt a warm hand close around his forearm. 

“Erik!” Charles’s cheeks were flushed from the cold, his eyes bright. “I tried to get a table, but it’s packed in here. You wouldn’t mind getting our coffee to go, would you?” 

Erik shook his head. “Where do you want to go?”

Charles shrugged. “I’d suggest a walk around campus, but the weather’s a little cold. Unless you’re willing to brave it, of course.” 

Erik arched an eyebrow. “Is that a challenge?”

“Are you up for it?” Charles grinned and gave him a quick once-over. “You’re not even wearing gloves.” 

“I’m fine.” As they neared the counter, Erik grabbed his wallet. “Do you want a mocha again?”

Shaking his head, Charles took his own wallet in hand. “Put that away. It’ll be on me today. What do you want? What did you have last time?”

He thought about protesting. He was trying to woo Charles here, after all, and paying for his drinks was the least he could do. But Charles gave him a long look, as if daring him to argue. So he swallowed his objection and answered, “Coffee. Black.” 

Charles laughed. “I could have guessed.” 

They ordered, Charles paid, and then they pushed through the throng into the cold air outside. As the wind began to pick up, Erik pulled up the collar of his jacket and locked his hands around his Styrofoam cup to warm them. Charles, at least, seemed less bothered by the cold than Erik, perhaps because he was wearing two sweaters that Erik could see, along with a thick red scarf and a pair of fingerless gloves. Erik reached out and plucked at one uneven end of the scarf, its raggedness a sharp contrast to the rest of Charles’s neat appearance. 

“Where did you get this?” he asked, trying not to grin. 

Charles glanced down. “This? My sister made it. She had a knitting phase a couple of years ago. I know it doesn’t look impressive, but it’s surprisingly warm. Here, try it.”

“No,” Erik tried to protest, but Charles had unwound the scarf from his neck in an instant and settled it snugly around Erik’s. Standing as close as they were, he could smell the scent of Charles’s shampoo, fresh and alluring. He wanted to dip his head and bury his nose into Charles’s hair, wanted to tilt Charles’s head back and taste his lips. He wondered how many more of these little rendezvouses it would take before Charles let him. 

“Erik…” 

He realized Charles’s fingers had been brushing the skin of his neck as he’d adjusted the scarf. Those fingers stilled now, and Charles looked up at him with a frown, his brow creasing. “Like I told you,” he said quietly, “if you’re looking for a fling, I’m not it.” 

Telepathy. Enhanced by physical contact. Damn it. Erik took a deliberate step away. “Sorry. That’s not…” He took a breath. “I’m not here for that. I just wanted to talk.” 

Charles eyed him. “Really.” 

“Really.” He stared down at the coffee cup in his hand, pointedly thinking of the heat of the drink, traveling through the Styrofoam and into his fingers through conduction, curling through the lid in the form of steam with a gaseous pressure he could calculate, if he had a thermometer and an appropriate apparatus to capture gas evolution. There was no way to tell if Charles was peeking in his mind now, but he thought it would be better safe than sorry. 

“Right.” Charles sounded skeptical. “Look, Erik, you don’t have to explain your motives to me. You’ve got a lot of interesting things to say, and I’d love to hear them. But please don’t expect anything more. I’d just like to talk. As friends.” 

Friends, nothing more. Well, that sounded damning to his objectives. But still, that was one step closer than acquaintance, right? This was progress. Erik smiled and said, “Of course.” 

“Good. Just so we’re clear.” He stepped back and it was as if he’d flipped a switch: the frown pinching his lips vanished, replaced almost immediately by that bright smile. “How’s the scarf then?”

Erik tugged at one too-long end. “It’s…warm.” 

“See? What did I tell you?” He shook his head as Erik made to remove it. “No, keep it. You look like you need it more than I do.” 

“I’m not that cold,” Erik protested, though he kept the scarf anyway. It _was_ warm, and softer than it looked. It also smelled faintly of Charles, not that Erik noticed. 

They headed down the street at a brisk walk, setting a quick speed to ward off the cold. Erik was a few inches taller than Charles, and his stride was longer. But Charles kept up seemingly without much effort, barely breathing hard. In fact, it almost seemed as if he were pushing the pace. After a moment, Erik asked, amused, “Are you a track runner?” 

Charles glanced quizzically at him. “What?”

“We’re walking pretty fast.” 

“Oh. Sorry.” He slowed abruptly, and Erik had to take a couple of steps back to draw level with him again. “Better?”

“I wasn’t complaining,” Erik said as they resumed their walk. “Just saying.” 

“I’m not a track runner, no,” Charles replied, cupping his hands around his mocha. “But I _am_ going to play football this year.” 

Erik shot him an incredulous look. From what he had seen, Charles had all the makings of a star student, not an athlete. “Football?”

“Soccer, if you prefer. It’s only intramurals though. I don’t have time to commit to a club team, and besides, I’m a grad student.” Charles darted a glance at him. “You should come by sometime. It’d be fun.” 

“Yeah,” Erik said. “That’d be cool.” It’d give him more time to spend with Charles, at the very least. At the rate this seduction was going, he was going to need all the time he could get. 

“So?” Charles asked as they rounded the corner of the block and headed toward the green commons. “What did you think of the article?”

The editorial. Right. Erik had nearly forgotten it. 

He didn’t want to launch into a criticism just yet, but there hadn’t been anything he felt he could praise. He settled on saying, “You’re a very good writer.” 

Charles fixed him with a shrewd look. “But you don’t agree with what I have to say. That’s all right. What didn’t you like?”

Erik considered. “Is it rude to say all of it?”

 _“All—”_ Charles laughed. “Fair enough. I _am_ writing against your Manifesto after all. Any particular points?”

“There was a part where you said forcing separation would only lead to increased tensions and the decline of both human and mutant society,” Erik said. “But you’re wrong.”

“Oh?” Charles’s eyes gleamed with keen interest. “Do tell.” 

They spent the next hour and a half shooting rebuttals back and forth, circling the campus twice as they did. Even after his coffee was long gone, Erik barely noticed the cold. His eyes were riveted to Charles. The telepath was mesmerizing in everything he did, in the way he spoke, in the way he grinned when Erik made a particularly good point, as if he were admitting and appreciating Erik’s logic. The only other person Erik had ever discussed politics so thoroughly with was Sebastian. But Sebastian lost his temper easily when opposed. Erik tended to agree with him, partly because he actually agreed, partly because he didn’t want to deal with Sebastian’s fury at being contradicted. Charles was his exact opposite; he was impassioned but never angry, firm but perfectly willing to let Erik have his say. He seemed more gleeful than anything every time Erik offered a refutation, but he never let Erik’s words lie untouched and unanalyzed for long; there was always a well-planned, coherent response that made Erik wonder at the speed of Charles’s mind, at his obvious skill with extemporaneous speaking. Charles was brilliant, not only in his sciences but also in his understanding of mutant politics. After an hour and a half of the rapid-fire discussion, Erik deemed him the most sensible, most tolerable integrationist he had ever met.

They eventually rounded the block they had come from and ended up in front of the coffee shop again. It was nearly 6:15 now, and Erik’s stomach was growling. As they came to a stop in front of the shop, Charles said apologetically, “This was a lovely conversation, Erik, and I wish I could ask you to dinner to continue it but I have a late lab to get to tonight. Can I get a rain-check?”

Dinner. More serious than coffee, which made it yet another step toward Erik’s ultimate goal. Coffee, texts, dinner—Erik couldn’t have planned the progression out better himself. Charles was making this almost too easy. 

“Yeah, of course,” he answered. “Text me or call me when you’re free.” 

“Will do.” Charles started to head off, then turned around to give Erik a cheerful wave. “I’ll see you later, Erik. And don’t think you won tonight’s debate, because you most certainly didn’t.” 

“I think I did,” Erik called after him. “But if you want to dispute that, I’ll be happy to beat you again.” 

Charles laughed. “I look forward to it, my friend.” 

Then he turned back on his heel and disappeared down the street. His cold hands tucked under his armpits, Erik watched him go, again tracking his watch until it turned the corner and faded away. 

“My friend,” Charles had called him. Erik couldn’t explain the little burst of warmth in his chest at the thought. 

It wasn’t until he stamped back into the apartment a couple of hours later that he noticed that he was still wearing Charles’s scarf. His first thought was the pleased realization that this would give him yet another excuse to see Charles, if only for the few minutes it would take him to return the scarf. His second thought was to curse—the weather was only getting colder, and he wondered if Charles would be okay without it.

He shook away the idea. It wasn’t his job to worry about Charles. They weren’t friends, even if Charles seemed to believe it. Erik didn’t have many friends, and a boy he had been dared to seduce and fuck wasn’t going to make the list. Couldn’t make the list. 

Still, he took care in folding the scarf up and setting it on his desk. Touching one jagged edge, he couldn’t help but remember Charles’s fingers against his neck, carefully adjusting the scarf so that it hung snugly and warmly. He wondered if Charles were always so thoughtful with all his proclaimed friends. Probably. Charles would have lent his scarf a stranger if he’d looked like he needed it. Erik was nothing special to him, just as Charles was nothing special to Erik. Just a mark, a target to be wooed and won. And if there was some good coffee and stimulating conversation to be had along the way, Erik wasn’t complaining. 

A moment later, he heard the front door open, followed by Sebastian’s voice, laden with irritation. “Erik? You here?”

With a sigh, he put Charles out of his mind and headed for the hall. “Yeah. What’s up?”

* * *

The anonymous author who had penned the first editorial criticizing the Manifesto now had a full column two times a week, and he went by the name Professor X.

When Erik had asked Charles what that was about, Charles had laughed and told him that he’d thought about becoming a professor after he earned his PhD, and that Professor X was his sister’s nickname for him. It had seemed like as good a pseudonym as any, though he’d told Erik that he was open to suggestions. But Erik hadn’t had any suggestions. Professor X suited Charles, he thought. The name sounded as academic and intelligent as it was mysterious, and already it had gathered a small following as people began to take note of the column that printed every Monday and Wednesday like clockwork. Even professors were reading it, and in one class, Dunn had chosen an excerpt and had proceeded to tear it apart viciously. To Erik’s surprise, he had had to clench his teeth to keep from _defending_ Charles’s work, of all things. He had to be losing his grip, if he were quicker to identify with an integrationist than with a separatist. But that really wasn’t saying much; Dunn was a mutantphobic asshole, and even his separatist beliefs weren’t nearly enough to redeem him in Erik’s eyes. 

It felt strange to know Professor X’s true identity and keep silent as Sebastian paced around the apartment and raged against his anonymous foe. Erik had never really had a hand in writing the Manifesto beyond offering some ideas, but that newsletter was Sebastian’s pride and joy. Seeing it refuted time and time again by an enemy he couldn’t name pissed him off to no end. Erik had never kept a secret from Sebastian before, but he didn’t say anything now. He wasn’t sure why, except for the fact that Charles felt like his and his alone, and he felt foolishly—selfishly—that sharing Charles’s name with Sebastian would ruin whatever…thing they had. It wasn’t a relationship, no. But a friendship? Erik was starting to see that that might be the most accurate label for what this was—this weekly coffee, lively debates over hot chocolate at the Student Union Building, random texts in the night when Charles remembered a point he had forgotten to make earlier. It felt new and tentative and _comfortable,_ and Erik liked it. He liked it a lot. 

Four weeks after the first Professor X column had been published, Charles gave him a call. They had only ever texted before this, never spoken over the phone, so when he spotted the name that flashed across the screen, Erik froze for a long moment. Charles. Calling him? What for? He picked up his phone and, after a brief hesitation, accepted the call. “Hello?” 

“Erik! Hello! It’s Charles.” 

“Yeah,” he said, letting his amusement bleed into his tone, “I know. I have your number, in case you’ve forgotten.” 

“Oh. Right. Of course. Well, I was wondering if you…well, if you were free tonight.” 

“Yeah, I should be. What did you have in mind?”

“I wanted to ask you to dinner.” 

Dinner? Erik’s heart skipped a beat. A real date now? Had they progressed past just coffee then? He felt strangely giddy at the thought. Giddy and nervous all at once. 

Apparently his silence had gone on a couple of beats too long, because Charles said hastily, “Nothing formal. Not even dinner really, just some fast food. I was thinking IHOP? But of course, if you would rather we didn’t, I’d have no problem with it. I just thought that since I haven’t eaten and you haven’t eaten—well, that’s an assumption, I have no idea if you’ve eaten or not—”

“Charles,” he interrupted. “Meet you at the IHOP on 14th Street at 7:45?”

“Perfect,” Charles breathed. “I’ll see you there.” 

It was already 7:28. Even if the IHOP was only a five-minute walk away, Erik didn’t want to keep Charles waiting. He was off his bed and out the door in a shot, pausing only to snatch his keys and his wallet from off his desk. 

He nearly ran face-first into Sebastian in the hallway outside. 

“Erik,” Sebastian said, startled. “Going somewhere?”

“Yeah, heading out for dinner,” he answered impatiently. 

Sebastian frowned. “Don’t be too long. Don’t forget we have a Brotherhood meeting tonight at eight.” 

Oh right. Shit, he’d totally forgotten. But he couldn’t cancel on Charles now, not when Charles was probably already heading over there. 

“I can’t make it today,” he said, skirting around Sebastian and heading for the front door. “Next time.” 

_“Next time?”_ Sebastian caught his arm, his eyes narrowed. “You’ve never missed a Brotherhood meeting before.” 

Erik sighed. “Look, I’m busy, all right?”

“No, it’s not all right. You’re my right-hand man, Erik, you can’t skip meetings.” Sebastian stepped closer, suspicion lining his expression. His grip around Erik’s upper arm tightened. “Are you going out with someone?”

For a second, he almost lied. But then he thought, What was the harm in telling Sebastian? He’d be pleased. He’d set the bet after all. And he knew Erik well, knew his competitiveness; he’d expect Erik to be working hard to seduce Charles. He’d understand that if having dinner with Charles was going to help him win this bet, then Erik was going to do it, even if it meant missing a few of Sebastian’s precious gatherings. 

“It’s Charles,” he replied. “I’m having dinner with him.” 

For a moment, Sebastian only stared back at him blankly. Then his eyes widened in recognition, and his mouth curved up in an incredulous smile. “The boy? The one from the bookstore?”

Erik nodded. 

“Erik!” Sebastian laughed. “You haven’t said anything for weeks. I thought you weren’t going to take the bet seriously. I was just going to forget about it.” 

“Oh, I’m taking it seriously,” Erik assured him. Sebastian had no idea how many times he’d met with Charles in the last few weeks. And if every encounter felt less and less like a means to an end and more of an enjoyment in and of itself—Erik didn’t let himself think on that too long. 

“How long have you been at it?” Sebastian asked, his eyes gleaming with curiosity. 

“Last couple of weeks.” Give or take a few. 

“And you haven’t even gotten into his pants yet?” Sebastian tsk-ed. “You’re losing your touch. I thought Janos said the kid was a tease. A flirt. Can’t be that difficult if he’s doing half the work already.” 

Erik shrugged. “Yeah, he flirts, but he’s not like that. He’s not looking for sex.” 

Sebastian grinned. “So he’s playing hard to get. And you still haven’t worn him down yet? For shame, Erik, for shame.” 

Playing hard to get? Erik had thought so too at first, but lately he hadn’t been so sure. Charles had never once made advances on Erik, for all that he shot Erik occasional flirty looks and tested out some truly horrific pickup lines on him. After that second coffee date, they hadn’t spoken of being anything more than friends since. And for some reason, Erik hadn’t pushed. He forgot sometimes what he was really doing with Charles, with the bet. Charles made it easy to forget. 

But he wasn’t about to tell Sebastian that. He shrugged. “I guess, yeah.” 

“So you’re going to dinner with him?” Sebastian asked, his smile turning sly. “Is it going to be endgame tonight? Take him home, give him a goodnight kiss so good he’ll invite you up, then fuck the living daylights out of him? Don’t forget to get us his underwear. Should I have that necklace wrapped up and ready by the time you get home tonight? Or will you not even come home? I wouldn’t blame you if you stayed for more than one round. The kid’s a treat. I’d fuck that. Bet his ass is tighter than a—”

“Shut your mouth,” Erik snapped, entirely without meaning to. 

Both of them froze. Sebastian had made crude remarks before. It was almost a daily routine for him, and Janos and Azazel usually joined him on it. Erik found it amusing, or at least he usually did. He had never taken offense at any of their comments, but right then, he felt so offended on Charles’s behalf that he wanted to seize Sebastian by his collar and punch him square across the mouth. To think that Sebastian was fantasizing about Charles, about his ass and about fucking him—it made Erik nearly sick with fury. 

“What?” Sebastian said finally. 

Erik took a breath and stepped away. “Don’t talk about him like that. Just don’t.” 

“And why not?” Sebastian’s gaze followed him as he paced away. “It’s a fact. What did Janos say? He’s too good to sleep with anyone? So he’s probably tight. I wonder if anyone’s actually gotten into that ass of his before. Probably take a whole bottle of lube to open him up. Let me know later so I know how fast he can take it.”

“Don’t you fucking touch him,” Erik snarled. The thought of Sebastian’s roaming hands pressed against Charles’s body made Erik’s stomach turn. Sebastian was cruel. Erik was his friend and even he would admit as much. A man like Sebastian would break someone like Charles. He would take him and use him and then throw him away. Erik had seen it happen time and again in the four years he’d known him. If even a long-term, on-and-off lover like Emma meant little to him, then Charles was nothing. Charles represented a conquest, nothing more. Erik wouldn’t let that happen. 

“Erik,” Sebastian said slowly, his expression bemused, “put the TV down before you break it.” 

With a shock, he realized that the entire room was rattling and that the TV was hovering a couple of feet off its stand, tilting forward dangerously. He hadn’t even reached out—everything metal had just lurched into movement in response to his anger. He stared for a moment at the TV, his eyes wide. This hadn’t happened in years. He hadn’t lost control of his powers like this since he was seventeen. 

Sebastian watched as Erik raised his hand and set the TV carefully back down where it belonged. Then he arched his eyebrows and crossed his arms, something darkly amused in his eyes. “Oh, Erik. Don’t tell me you actually _like_ him.” 

“No,” Erik snapped. “Of course not. I just—” 

But he did. He _did_ like him. But Sebastian couldn’t know that. Sebastian would ridicule him forever for taking his eye off the ball. And if Sebastian ever found out that Charles was Professor X…

“Just?”

“Just…want him to myself,” Erik finished lamely. “Can you let me have him for five fucking seconds before you put your claim on him?”

It was a weak deflection, but Sebastian seemed to buy it. Some of the skeptical surprise in his eyes fading, he laughed and said, “Oh. Sorry. If that’s the way you want it.” He leaned back to perch on the arm of the couch. “So what’s the plan for tonight then?”

Erik wanted nothing more than to bolt for the door, but he forced himself not to move. “Dinner. No other plans.” 

Sebastian scoffed. “Come on, Erik. You know dinner’s a perfect segue into bed. You just have to play your cards right. I’ve seen you do it more than once. Bat those pretty eyelashes.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Erik muttered, turning on his heel. “I’ll see you later.” 

“Don’t forget what I’ve taught you!” Sebastian called after him as he pulled the front door open. “I expect details later!” 

It took an effort not to slam the door hard enough to break the hinges. He very deliberately pulled it shut gently and then leaned his head against the doorframe for a minute, breathing in deep. The anger was still there, curling hot in his belly. Knowing Sebastian wanted Charles like that wasn’t a surprise. But hearing him talk about it now, after Erik had known Charles for long enough to learn the curves of his smile…now it was an ugly shock. 

His phone beeped in his pocket. A text from Charles: _I’m here. Got a table in the back._

It was 7:42. Erik sent back, _I’ll be a little late,_ and then took another deep breath before heading down the stairs. 

When he arrived at the IHOP, it was mostly empty. Only a few tables were occupied, and he spotted Charles easily. He was sitting in a booth next to the window in the back, scribbling in his notebook as usual as he waited. 

“How many in your party?” the waitress at the door asked him. 

“I’m with him,” Erik said, pointing across the room. 

Without waiting for a reply, he brushed past her and headed over. Charles looked up as he approached and grinned. “Erik. Hey. You made it.” 

Erik slid into the booth across from him, trying to shove away any residual anger as he did. “Yeah.” 

Charles’s smile faltered a little. “Is everything okay?”

Erik frowned at him. “Yeah, everything’s fine. Why…” A bolt of suspicion shot through him. “You aren’t reading my mind, are you?”

The words came out sharper and more accusatory than he’d intended. Charles gave him a flat look, the good humor fading from his eyes. “You know I wouldn’t. But your bad mood is leaking everywhere. I can’t help but pick it up.” 

He exhaled slowly. “Sorry. I just…” _Don’t think about Sebastian. Don’t think about what he said._ “It’s nothing.” 

Charles studied him for a long moment. “You know if there’s anything I can do, you shouldn’t hesitate to ask.” 

_Yeah, you can let me fuck you,_ Erik thought. _Let me be finished with this bet once and for all._ He was abruptly tired of the pretense. He didn’t know why he’d taken the stupid bet in the first place, and now that he’d gotten to know Charles more, he was beginning to wish he never had. This—whatever they had between them—felt real, and he liked it that way. He liked how easy it was to be with Charles, liked the way Charles always paid him such careful attention, as if Erik were the most important person in the world. Charles spoke to everyone that way, but Erik didn’t think he imagined the way Charles’s gaze lingered on him longer than it usually did on anyone else, or the way Charles sometimes turned strangely shy around him. Charles was always so poised, always so confident, so it made his moments of uncertainty more noticeable. Sometimes he would dart a quick glance at Erik then away, his cheeks brushed pink. And sometimes he would look as if he had something he wanted to say, but when Erik looked back at him, he would smile brightly and change the subject.

This couldn’t be faked. This warmth in his chest when he thought of Charles, the odd burst of fondness—this was real. He only wished it were _real,_ without ulterior motives, without falsity. 

When he looked over, Charles’s expression was tinged with worry. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

He picked up the laminated menu and stared hard at it. “Yeah, I’m fine.” 

A waitress who came by to take their orders saved him from further scrutiny. Charles, of course, struck up a conversation with her immediately, and Erik tried not to actively glare in her direction when she bent down a little too close to Charles to show him the specials on the menu. Thankfully, she didn’t stay long, though she did toss a flirtatious smile at Charles over her shoulder as she went off with their orders. 

“Are you _sure_ you’re okay?” Charles pressed, turning his full attention back to Erik again once the waitress had disappeared. “You seem a little…”

Erik stiffened. “What?” 

“Tense.” 

He forced himself to relax his shoulders and uncurl his hands. “I’m not. What are you writing today?”

Charles favored him with a look of concern edged with amusement. “That was a very seamless transition. Subtle, really.” 

“Shut up,” Erik retorted, almost smiling. Barely five minutes in Charles’s company and his dark mood was lifting already. How did Charles manage it? “So what are you writing?”

“The Manifesto printed an article about social stratification in relation to mutant wellbeing,” Charles replied, picking up his pen again. “It was less of an article and more of a rant against the privileges of affluent mutants versus those mutants who aren’t so well-off.” 

Erik frowned. He hadn’t actually read this week’s issue of the Manifesto. He’d been doing a poor job of keeping up with it lately. And now Sebastian had written an article criticizing wealthy mutants? That was rich, coming from a man whose trust fund had taken him through college and would probably continue to take him through life for another twenty years at least. 

“Main ideas?” Erik asked. 

Charles cocked his head in surprise. “You haven’t read it?” 

“Not yet.” 

“Hmm…well, Shaw’s piece was mostly aimed at mutants who use their money to support integrationist causes. He was particularly venomous toward Dr. Worthington.” 

“Worthington’s a pompous ass,” Erik said. 

Charles laughed. “I admit, he can be a little…flamboyant. But he supports good causes.” 

Erik rolled his eyes. “Pacifists. Groups that take money and do absolutely no good with it.” 

“Pacifism isn’t bad.”

“Pacifism is the worst thing for the mutant cause right now,” Erik growled. “Not moving, not pushing—that tells the humans that we’re settling for the status quo, that we aren’t willing to fight for what’s ours.” 

“Some mutant-based nonviolent groups have done a huge amount of good,” Charles argued. “The National American Mutant Association, for example.” 

Erik scoffed. “The NAMA spews a bunch of good rhetoric out, and everyone drinks it in and believes that they’re the best thing to happen to mutants since the MRA got repealed. But they haven’t actually _done_ anything, except maybe send a rabble of lobbyists to Washington.” 

“Lobbyists are essential,” Charles said, jotting down phrases in shorthand on a fresh page in his notebook as he did. He always took notes on what Erik said. It had made Erik uncomfortable at first, but he’d gotten used to it. “How else do we get voices in Washington? Mutant senators and representatives are scarce. There’s growing tolerance in the public, but that sort of tolerance hasn’t exactly transferred when it comes to elected officials. Lobbyists are key.” 

“Lobbyists are utterly useless,” Erik replied contemptuously. “They’re disrespected. They’re barely listened to—”

“But they give us visibility, and that’s important. They force people to acknowledge that there are problems in society that need to be fixed.” 

“These problems have been around for decades. Anyone who hasn’t acknowledged them is being willfully stupid.” 

“You’d be surprised at how many willfully stupid people exist,” Charles said with a smile. Erik couldn’t help but smile back. It was amazing, really, how their debates never turned uncomfortably tense. For all that they argued and disagreed, Erik never got angry. Frustrated, yes. Irritated, yes. But not angry. He couldn’t be, not when Charles always seemed to try his best to be open-minded, and not when Charles always got so endearingly animated when he landed on a particularly good argument. 

Their meals arrived within the next few minutes, and Charles set aside his notebook to focus on his. Erik had ordered a platter of eggs, bacon, and waffles. Charles had ordered a towering stack of four pancakes layered over with thick strawberry syrup and topped with a spiral of whipped cream. The waitress lingered by their table and asked whether they needed anything else, her eyes pinned on Charles, who gave her that warm, charming smile of his, shook his head, and thanked her. She was clearly reluctant to leave, but Erik glowered at her until she backed away and scurried off. 

“That was mean,” Charles remarked as he picked up his knife and fork. 

“What?”

“The glaring. You scared her.” 

“I did not.” 

“You should’ve heard what she was thinking. And before you ask, no, I wasn’t reading her without permission. But she was thinking very loudly.” 

Erik sniffed disdainfully. “Humans scare easily.” 

“Humans.” Charles sighed. “You always speak of them as if they’re a completely different species, when in fact we’re not.”

“We’re evolved from humans. We’re different.” 

Charles’s nose wrinkled in that way that told Erik he was about to get a science lecture. The perils of conversing with a man who lived and breathed science, when he wasn’t busy moonlighting as a mysterious columnist for the school paper. “The biological species concept defines a species as composed of individuals who are capable of mating and producing viable, fertile offspring,” Charles said as he cut a neat slice off the top pancake, speared it with his fork, and dipped it in the syrup. “If you happen to have sex with a human woman and impregnate her, your child would be healthy and capable of producing its own children, barring medical abnormalities. Under that definition, humans and mutants aren’t separate species.” 

“Under that definition?” Erik echoed, raising his eyebrow. 

Charles gave him a patient look. “Under the morphological species concept as well. And the phylogenetic species concept. I can elaborate if you want.”

“Please,” Erik said, partly because he wanted to hear Charles’s reasoning, mostly because there was something enthralling about watching Charles talk about science and mutations, two of the subjects he was most passionate about. Erik was certain he had never met anyone with a mind as sharp as Charles’s, and it was fascinating to watch it work. It was also insanely hot.

Halfway through the waffles, his phone beeped with a message from Sebastian: _did u remember lube and condoms._ Instantly, his mood soured. He didn’t even bother replying, just shoved his phone disgustedly back into his pocket. 

Charles caught his scowl before he could flatten it out. “Is something wrong?” 

Was something wrong? His roommate was starting to seriously piss him off, which had never happened before. He was here because of a bet he’d made to fuck the Charles kid from the bookstore in exchange for a necklace and for the sake of his pride. Then he’d actually met the Charles kid, and now he was wishing he’d never even considered the stupid bet because he really _liked_ the Charles kid, and _fuck,_ this wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to _want_ to be friends with Charles. He wasn’t supposed to be perfectly fine with the idea of hanging out with Charles indefinitely, without the promise of sex anywhere in sight. He was here for a purpose, only it was getting harder to remember that, and if the reward for all this wasn’t sex, then what was it? 

He didn’t know the answer to that. He never did anything without reason, but now here he was, sitting across from Charles at IHOP, eating waffles and pancakes in a dinner that might possibly be something of a date, with no real purpose behind it. It wasn’t the bet, he knew that much. Maybe it had stopped being about the bet a long time ago. 

“Erik?”

He realized he’d been staring blankly at Charles instead of answering his question. “I’m fine,” he managed. “Really, I am.” 

Charles looked supremely unconvinced. A moment later, the waitress came by with their checks, but Charles barely glanced at her, his attention focused solely on Erik. “You aren’t sick, are you?” 

That almost made him laugh. Trust Charles to pounce on the one problem he _didn’t_ have. “No, I’m not sick.” 

“Are you sure?” Charles peered closely at him, his lips pursed. “You look a little pale. Maybe it’s the weather. You never dress warmly enough. And that reminds me, you still have my red scarf, the one Raven knitted me. As long as you have it, you might as well use it. It’ll keep you from getting sick. Are you _sure_ you’re feeling well? You’ve been broody all dinner.” 

“I’m not _broody,”_ Erik harrumphed. 

“You are most certainly broody. Look at that frown of yours.” Charles demonstrated with such a comically forced frown that Erik laughed. “Oh, there we go,” Charles said, pleased. “There’s a smile.” 

“I’ve been told my smile is scarier than my glare,” Erik replied, scooping up the last pieces of scrambled eggs onto his fork. 

“Nonsense,” Charles said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I have it on good authority that your smile is wonderful.” 

Erik raised an eyebrow. “Good authority? Whose?” 

“Mine, of course.” Charles flashed him a brilliant smile of his own, and Erik was nearly overcome by the sudden, powerful urge to lean forward and kiss that smile off his lips. Instantly, he corralled that thought, locked it away in case Charles overheard. But Charles said nothing and his smile didn’t dim. He only stuck another forkful of pancakes into his mouth, some whipped cream sticking to his lips. Erik wanted to lean across the table and wipe it off with his thumb, or with his tongue. _Fuck—_ everything Charles did made Erik want to touch him. Everything he did made him infuriatingly attractive, but Erik couldn’t make a move because at the beginning of this whole thing, Charles had made it impeccably clear that this was a friendship, nothing more, and Erik was going to respect that if it killed him, the fucking bet be damned. And with the way Charles was licking his lips now and sucking slowly on his fork, it was going to kill him. 

Charles glanced over the table, something considering in his eyes. Erik stared back, wondering what Charles was looking for. Whatever it was, he apparently found it, because he grinned and stood abruptly. “Let’s go.” 

Erik blinked. “What?”

“Let’s go,” Charles repeated, fishing a twenty dollar bill out of his wallet. “Let’s get out of here.” 

“I can pay—” Erik protested, but before he could reach for his wallet, Charles grabbed him by the arm and dragged him from the booth. He paused only to hand the twenty over at the counter and then he was hauling Erik out into the frigid night air, pulling to a stop just outside under the streetlight. 

They stood there for a long moment, their breaths pluming in gentle, wispy puffs. Erik watched Charles shuffle his feet to ward off the chill, his cheeks flushing red from the cold. 

“Maybe we should walk?” he ventured. “It’s too cold to stand around.” 

“No, wait,” Charles said, his eyes darting to Erik’s, then away. “Just a moment. I, um…” He paused, abruptly shy. It was such a contrast from his usual easy confidence that Erik stared. “I just wanted to…well, it might not be the right time and you might not even want—want what I…damn it.” He looked away, and Erik suspected that the color rising to his cheeks couldn’t be blamed fully on the cold. “I’m sorry, I’m going to make a mess of this. I’m already making a mess of this.” 

Erik let his confusion show across his face. “Making a mess of what?”

Charles took a long breath. For a moment, it looked as if he were going to shut his mouth again, spin on his heel and bury what he had wanted to say. But then resolve settled in his eyes, and he said quickly, as if he had to get it out before he lost his nerve, “When we first met, I told you that I wasn’t interested in a relationship. I told you that we’d stay friends if you wanted, nothing more.” 

“Yes,” Erik said slowly, wondering where this was going. 

“But you still…want me.” Charles fixed Erik with a searching gaze. “Even now. I’m not stupid, I have eyes. And just now, you were thinking very loudly, and I know that you want to—I know that you want me.” 

Oh fuck. Was he going to tell Erik that he didn’t think this friendship business was a good idea anymore because Erik couldn’t keep his thoughts out of the gutter? The idea of quitting this friendship made his stomach lurch. He realized in that instant that he didn’t give a damn about the bet. But the thought of losing _this_ —this camaraderie, this easy companionship—made something in his belly twist painfully. 

“No,” Erik said vehemently. “That’s not—No, I don’t.” 

Charles visibly recoiled. “Wha—you don’t?” He sounded baffled. 

“No, of course not,” Erik reassured him. “Friends. We’re friends, you said, and that’s okay. That’s good. And I’m sorry for thinking stupid things. I’m not—pushing you or anything—that’s not what I want—” 

“Not what you want?” Now Charles looked completely lost. “But back there…what you were thinking…” 

Erik shook his head. “No. My thoughts just—get away from me sometimes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you or make you uncomfortable or anything.”

 _“Offend_ me?” Charles let out a breathless laugh. “What makes you think I’m offended? I haven’t exactly been, you know, subtle.”

There was nothing to do but stare blankly at him. Erik didn’t understand. “What are you trying to say?”

Charles exhaled sharply and turned away to look into the street. His hands fidgeted restlessly his pockets. “I’m trying to…I don’t know.” He sighed. “I’m rubbish at this, aren’t I? I’ve never done this before.” 

He fell silent. Erik waited, watching the light from the streetlight bend over Charles’s features, throwing shadows over the bridge of his nose and the curve of his lips. Charles looked like he was searching for the right words. For a brief moment, it seemed as if he wouldn’t find them, and that they’d walk away, pretend this conversation had never happened. But then he turned back to Erik and met his eyes. “I heard what you were thinking back there. And I, um…well, I wouldn’t mind, is what I’m trying to say. You know, if you kissed me.” 

Erik’s eyes widened in shock. “But—you said—”

Charles took a hesitant step forward, and when Erik didn’t move, grabbed the lapels of his jacket and pulled him down until their lips touched. It was the gentlest, most careful kiss Erik had ever received, barely a brush of mouths, just enough to give Erik the hint of Charles’s taste and nothing more. It was over in seconds, but Charles lingered there for a long moment, not breaking contact and not moving. Lifting his hand, he touched two fingers to Erik’s temple and drew a line down to his jaw. 

“I know what I said,” he whispered against Erik’s lips. “I’m saying something different now.” 

They stayed motionless under the streetlight for an interminable minute. Erik’s mind raced futilely, trying and failing to make sense of the situation. Hadn’t Charles said they could be friends and only that? Hadn’t he told Erik that if he were looking for a fling, he’d have to look elsewhere? 

Charles flinched back. “A fling. If you are…if that’s still what you want, then yes, what I said stands. But I thought that you might want something else.” His glance upward was shy. “Something more.” 

More. What did that mean? A _relationship?_ He almost yanked himself instinctively away. No, he didn’t want a relationship. It wasn’t ever supposed to get this far, it wasn’t ever supposed to be anything but a fleeting, casual acquaintanceship, but he couldn’t turn away. It was _impossible_ to turn away. 

Before he knew what he was doing, he was leaning down again, pressing their lips more firmly together, pulling Charles close with one arm around his shoulder and one curled around the small of his back. Charles tasted of strawberry syrup and whipped cream, as sweet against Erik’s tongue as anything he had ever tasted. Of course he tasted sweet. It was Charles, he thought in wonder and delight. He couldn’t taste any other way. 

He felt a burst of sharp pleasure behind his eyes, so sudden and intense that he jerked back with a startled gasp. Still only inches away, Charles stared at him with wide, dazed eyes. “I’m sorry. Sorry.” 

Erik blinked uncomprehendingly. “That was you?”

“My telepathy. I just—lost control a little.” His hands tightened anxiously around Erik’s jacket. “That’s…okay, right? I mean, I’ll do better next time. I’m usually in much better control of myself, of my telepathy—”

“No, no, it’s fine.” He hesitated, then asked, “When you go into people’s minds, do you see everything? All at once?” Emma had never explained her telepathy in anything but the vaguest terms. She liked to keep it a mystery. But now, if Charles…

Charles shook his head. “Surface thoughts I can read without effort. That’s like listening to someone in front of me speaking. Anything deeper and I’d have to consciously move to access them. That’s like…like going into an attic and opening up boxes. It’s a choice.” 

“So if I…let you in…” The sudden, blazing excitement in Charles’s eyes nearly made him forget the rest of what he wanted to say, but he pushed through. “…would you promise not to look at everything? Just at—”

“Just whatever you show me,” Charles breathed, his eyes bright. “I’d be _honored_ if you’d let me, really, I’ve always wanted—” 

Erik kissed him again and pulled Charles’s hand up to touch his temple. There was a brief second of nothing. And then— _everything._ Charles’s mind swarmed out into his, so rapidly and blindingly that he panicked and mentally scrabbled for the shields Emma had taught him once, throwing them up in the onslaught of dizzying emotion. He fought to make sense of it, the blossoms of feeling solidifying into something recognizable—joy, anticipation, wonder, surprise, _worry_. The last slammed hard into him, and as he struggled to catch his breath, the chaos yanked away, so quickly he was dizzy all over again. 

When he came back to himself, he was sagging in Charles’s arms, his forehead pressed to Charles’s, Charles staring wide-eyed at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I got excited. It’s just—it’s been so long since I’ve been able to touch anyone’s mind like that, and yours is—it’s _marvelous._ But it was too much for you. I’m sorry. I should’ve gone slower and I—” His voice hitched. Then he said, more quietly, “I’d understand if you wanted to go. Your car’s over there, if you want me to walk you over—”

“Idiot,” Erik said, the words coming out a bit ragged. “I’m not going anywhere.” 

Surprise and confusion flashed across Charles’s face. “But…you aren’t, I don’t know, _afraid?_ Or angry?”

Erik huffed. “Am I supposed to be afraid?” The truth was, he was, a little. But not enough to walk away. “Look, we’ll work on it, okay?”

For a moment, Charles just looked at him, his blue eyes glowing in the lamplight. Then he smiled, something impossibly warm in the curve of his lips, and tiptoed to kiss Erik again. “Thank you.” He held out his hand. “Give me a ride back to my flat?”

Erik curled his fingers around Charles’s. “Of course.”

* * *

On Tuesday, he headed to the library at four-forty and wove his way up to the second-floor study rooms. Charles was there as expected, the metal of his watch now nearly as familiar to Erik as Charles’s face. When he stopped at the door and glanced through the window, he frowned when he saw that Charles wasn’t alone. A curly redheaded boy sat across from him, tapping something into a graphing calculator as Charles looked on. After a moment, Charles leaned over to cross something out on the boy’s paper and said something to make the redhead laugh. The kid threw his arm around Charles’s shoulders, and Erik bristled in a hot flush of uneasy jealousy.

As if he’d felt the way Erik’s stomach had jolted, Charles lifted his head and looked straight out the window at Erik. He grinned brightly when he spotted him and waved. A moment later, a tentative voice said, _I’ll be done in a moment._

Erik started. He’d been friends with Emma long enough to know what it sounded like to have a telepath speak directly into your mind. But Emma was never so quiet. _Charles?_

_Yeah. Is this okay?_

_Yes. It’s fine._ And he meant it. 

Charles’s smile broadened. _You’re welcome to come in._

Erik opened the door, stepped inside, and shut it again behind him. “Hey,” he said aloud. “I brought coffee.” 

The redhead stared at him. “Who’s this?”

“This is Erik,” Charles replied, standing and taking the coffee that Erik held out to him. “He’s my—”

“His boyfriend,” Erik finished. It felt strange but good to say the word out loud. And the way the redhead’s eyes shot wide open made it worth it. 

He didn’t miss the relief that tinged Charles’s expression. “Yes,” he affirmed happily, “this is my boyfriend. Erik, this is Sean.” He sat back down and lifted the cup. “Thank you for the coffee.”

“Café mocha,” Erik told him. 

Charles took a sip. “Mm. Just how I like it. Sit down if you want. Sean and I are almost done.” 

Erik took a seat across from the both of them and leaned over to look at what they were working on. “Calculus?”

“Bane of my existence,” Sean groaned. 

“Nonsense,” Charles said. “You’re doing well. Now show me how you’d integrate this equation. Don’t forget that the integral of 1 over x is the natural log of x.” 

Erik waited in silence for the next fifteen minutes as Charles and Sean worked out the rest of the problems on the worksheet. He let his gaze roam over Charles’s face, studying the way his mouth moved when he spoke, watching the way his eyes skimmed across the papers, sharp and intelligent. Charles had freckles on the bridge of his nose that Erik wanted to kiss. More freckles dusted his cheeks and continued lightly down his neck. Erik wondered how far down those freckles went. Down his shoulders? Down his back? Lower? 

Charles coughed. _Could you not? You’re being distracting._

Erik froze in surprise. _You’re listening?_

 _Well, I…thought that this would be okay. I usually have my shields up completely, but since last night, I thought it would be okay to relax them a little._ A thin tendril of concern wound between them. _If you’d rather I didn’t—_

 _No. It’s okay._ Erik smirked as a thought struck him. _Distracting, you said?_

 _Oh, don’t,_ Charles replied, catching on instantly. 

Erik’s smirk widened. He let his gaze catch on Charles’s lips and remembered how it had felt to press his own lips against Charles’s, closed-mouthed and sweet and intoxicatingly warm in the cold night air. Strawberry syrup and whipped cream. He wished now that he’d given Charles a lick, wished he’d chased the taste with his tongue. But he could now. He could lean over across the table, pull Charles in by his blue cardigan, kiss him silly. 

Charles shot him a glare through a blush. “Sean,” he said aloud, “I think we’ve done enough for today. If it’s okay with you, we’ll end a little early?”

The redhead looked more relieved than anything. “Yeah, sure. Thanks, Charles. I’ll drop by on Thursday again.” 

“Yeah, definitely come by before your exam.” 

They both watched as Sean packed his things away in silence. Then he gave them a parting smile before saying his goodbyes and slipping out the door. 

The instant they were alone, Charles was out of his chair and practically on top of Erik, kissing him with an assuredness that had been absent the night before. Erik leaned eagerly into the kiss, his hands itching to immediately ruck up Charles’s shirt, everything in him aching to just push Charles down over the table and fuck him right there. 

Charles broke the kiss, his eyes wide. _Fuck,_ Erik had forgotten—telepathy. He froze. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t—fuck.” He forced himself to lean back. “I’ve just never done this before. Had a…relationship, you know. Or gone slow. It’s always been…” Flings. One-time things. Never anything he had to face in the morning, never anything he was afraid of losing. 

For a moment, he thought Charles might get up and walk away. But Charles only smiled encouragingly. “This is new to me, too. We can learn together. If it’s going too fast, I’ll tell you, all right? And you tell me.” 

Erik nodded slowly. “That sounds good.” After a moment, he ventured, “Then desk sex is too fast?”

To his relief, Charles laughed and the tension between them vanished. “Yes, that’s just a tad too fast.” 

“Okay. Then could you get off my lap? It’s a little hard to think when you’re on top of me like that.” 

“Oh! Sorry.” Charles slid to his feet with a rueful grin. As he moved to collect his notebooks and pens, he asked, “Did you come by to just give me coffee or did you want something?” 

Erik stood and waited for him by the door. “Are you doing anything tonight? I thought we could get dinner.” 

Charles grimaced. “Ah, sorry. I was planning to go back to my flat and get some quality writing done. I’ve been slacking on my dissertation.” He slung his backpack on across his shoulders and then paused. “If you wanted though, you could come over. We could order pizza, and you could bring some stuff to work on, too. If you wanted.” 

Charles’s flat. Just where Erik had wanted to get to when he’d first met Charles. Except now he barely spared the bedroom any thought. All he was wondering was if he was hungry enough for them to have to order more than one pizza. 

“Sure,” he said with a grin. “I have some papers in my car I need to work on. Give you a ride?”

Charles beamed. “That’d be great.” 

Charles lived only ten minutes away from campus, and Erik stared as they pulled up. He passed this street all the time, but he’d never imagined that Charles would have a place here, in one of these towering apartment complexes that could have housed celebrities, and probably did. As he parked, a uniformed man hurried up to greet him, and he realized with a jolt of shock that it was a valet. A _valet!_ And he could see a doorman standing below a wide awning, waiting with hands clasped behind his back, a polite smile on his face. 

“Jesus,” he breathed. “Are you _rich?”_

Charles looked faintly embarrassed. “I’m well-off, yes. Come on.” 

Erik got dazedly out of the car, grabbed his bag out of the backseat, and let the valet take the keys. Trying not to openly gawk, he followed Charles in, not missing the way the doorman greeted Charles by name. 

“I’m on the fifteenth floor,” Charles told him as they stepped into the elevator. He hit 15 on the panel and waited as the doors closed. When Erik didn’t say anything, Charles snuck a glance over at him. “You okay?”

“Fine. I just didn’t know you were loaded.” Charles _had_ to be wealthy, to be a student and live in a place like this, with doormen and valets and elevators so shiny Erik could see his reflection perfectly in the walls. 

Charles pushed his hands into his pockets and looked up at the number above the doors, signaling the arrival of the 8th floor, then the 9th. “I had a trust fund. Then half a year ago, my mother died, and I took over the family money.” 

“Oh.” Erik wasn’t sure which part of that sentence to address first. For a moment, he absorbed the information in silence, letting the smooth hum of metal in the elevator calm his surprise. Eventually, he said, “I’m sorry about your mother.” 

“Thank you. To tell you the truth, it was a long time coming. She drank a lot.” Charles stared at his shoes. “It’s a wonder her liver even lasted that long.” 

Erik didn’t think it was tactful to ask after the other part of what Charles had said, but Charles picked up on his curiosity anyway. “My father owned a company that’s been in the family for decades. After he died, my mother tried to run it for a long time, but it’s hard to run a business when you’re only sober two days out of the week. So the Board of Directors let the company out to the public. The Xavier family still owns a hefty amount of the stock, but we aren’t really directly involved anymore.” 

“A company. How much…” 

“Enough to live very comfortably for the rest of my life,” Charles replied. The elevator came to a stop and dinged, the doors sliding open. “Come on.” 

They headed down the hall and stopped in front of a door stamped with 278A. Charles fished out his key and unlocked the door, swinging it open wide. “Welcome to my flat.” 

The place was huge. Judging from the building, Erik supposed he should have expected it, but he was still shocked as he glanced around the spacious living room, tastefully decorated with furniture that probably cost as much as Erik’s car, layered over in soft carpet that sank under Erik’s weight. There was a kitchen separated from the living room by a low counter, and Erik could feel the hum of machinery all the way in his fingertips, the metal of the place vibrating to attention as he passed. To the left was a hallway that he assumed led to the bedroom, which was probably as luxurious as the rest of the place. 

“What do you think?” Charles asked, dropping his backpack onto the couch. 

Erik glanced around again. “It’s…huge.” 

Charles sighed. “Yeah, it is. Too big for one person. My mother put me up here when I first came, even though I told her I wanted someplace smaller. Now that she’s gone, I’m planning on selling the place and moving somewhere else. Somewhere more manageable.” 

“This view is amazing,” Erik said as he parted the curtains to peer out the windows. He could see the skyline in the distance, broken by the jut of skyscrapers. 

“It’s also amazingly expensive,” Charles said with a laugh. He went to fetch the landline phone on the counter. “So what kind of pizza do you want?”

They ordered one pepperoni, one vegetable, and then headed to Charles’s study, which was one of the rooms down the hall. This room was much more cluttered than the rest of the apartment, books and papers strewn everywhere, the grand desk nearly hidden underneath its load of folders and books. “Sorry for the mess,” Charles said as they settled in, Charles behind his desk, Erik across from him in a chair he pulled up from the corner. “I tend to spread out all my things when I work, and since I’m the only one here, I don’t bother cleaning it up. Feel free to move anything if you need to.” 

Erik picked up the copy of the Manifesto that lay on the edge of the desk. “Have you written your column for tomorrow yet?”

Charles nodded. “I’m supposed to turn it in at least two days early. This time was about suppressants. Shaw has some very strong opinions on them.” 

Erik frowned. “So do I.” 

Charles gave him a warning look over the open folder in his hands. “Don’t start a debate now. You’re going to distract me.” 

“Suppressants are wrong.” 

_“Don’t.”_

“They’re tools for human oppression.”

“…Damn you.” Charles put down his folder and glared, but there was an undercurrent of fond, exasperated amusement in his eyes that couldn’t be mistaken. After a moment he leaned back in his seat and fixed Erik with a patient look. “Fine, I’ll bite. How are they tools for oppression?”

By the time the pizza arrived, they’d gotten no work done, but the debate had turned heated and had to be taken to the living room. Charles didn’t stop arguing his point even as he paid for the pizza and fetched plates from the kitchen, and Erik found that he didn’t even particularly care anymore if he convinced Charles of anything or not; he just liked watching Charles talk and move, his face as expressive as an artist’s canvas, emotions painted across without any effort to hide them. 

He also discovered, after a while, that it was possible to shut Charles up once he warmed up to his topic. The first kiss shocked Charles into a silence that didn’t last long once he realized Erik’s intention to derail his argument. The second lasted longer, and by the third, both of them had forgotten what they were discussing. The pizza lay untouched on the coffee table as Erik stretched Charles out on the couch, pressing deep kisses on him that left them both breathless and dizzy. 

They laid drowsily tangled together for a long time, until the sun disappeared and cast the apartment into darkness. Erik had never cuddled with someone like this before, and it felt warm and wonderful with an intimacy that had nothing to do with sex. He kissed Charles’s brow, his cheek, his ear, reveling in the pleased grins Charles gave him, in between the sharp gasps that puffed out from between his lips when Erik let his teeth scrape along skin. His fingers traced the lines of Charles’s jaw, his neck, down to his collarbones, drifting back and forth across his flushed skin again and again, listening to Charles purr, cat-like, as he did. He could lie here forever, he thought. Just lay his head down on Charles’s chest and listen to that heartbeat until he drifted off. 

Eventually, he had to shift when his arm started to fall asleep. As he did, he glanced over to the table. “The pizza’s cold.” 

“I have a microwave,” Charles murmured into Erik’s shoulder. He sounded sleepy. “We can always reheat. Let’s just…lie here for a few more minutes.”

They ended up falling asleep, waking up only when Erik’s phone went off, jolting them both to consciousness. For a groggy moment, they blinked in confusion at each other. Then realization set in, and they noticed at the same time how Charles was twisted up in Erik’s body, his leg thrown over Erik’s hip, his head pillowed on Erik’s shoulder. “Um,” Charles said. His other leg was lying against Erik’s groin, where Erik was, to his horror, half-hard. 

“Let’s get up?” he tried. 

“Yes,” Erik said, embarrassed. “Let’s get up.” 

“I’ll go reheat the pizza.” Charles’s eyes darted down below Erik’s belt, and a furious blush suffused his cheeks. “Yeah, I’ll just—” He grabbed their plates and disappeared to the kitchen. Erik leaned his elbows on his knees and scrubbed a hand over his face. Part of him wanted to leap across the room and pin Charles to the stove, bend him over and shove down his pants to his ankles and take him against the counter. If this had been a few weeks ago, he probably would have done it. But instead he sat back on the couch and closed his eyes, focusing on the slow turn of the microwave, feeling out every coil and metal grate. 

His phone rang again. Erik reached for it and almost ignored it when he saw the name on the screen. But he knew that ignoring it wouldn’t make it go away, so he picked up and tried not to sound too snappish. “Sebastian.” 

“Erik. Where are you?”

Erik glanced around. “At a friend’s.” 

“A friend’s. Really.” There was a pause, then a sharp intake of breath. “You’re at _Charles’s,_ aren’t you.” 

He hesitated a second too long. Sebastian said gleefully, “You are. Did you already get to the bedroom or are you working up to it?”

“I’m not,” Erik muttered. “That’s not why I’m here.” 

“Why the fuck _else_ are you there? Hey, Janos—Janos, get over here. Erik’s gotten into Charlie boy’s place.” Something rustled loudly on the other end of the line, and a moment later, Janos’s voice came through. “I hear you’re close to winning this bet?”

Erik pinched the bridge of his nose. “No. I’m not—”

“How many clothes do you still have on?” Sebastian broke in. “If you haven’t even gotten your shirts off, I’ll be disappointed—”

“Listen,” Erik snapped, pitching his voice low so Charles couldn’t hear, “I’m not going to sleep with him, so stop pestering me about it, all right?”

“Not going to _sleep_ with him?” Sebastian laughed. “Then what the fuck are you doing there?”

“I’m—” He couldn’t say dating. Sebastian and the others would mock him mercilessly for it. But there was no lie he could tell. There was only the truth. “Look, I like him, okay? I really like him.” 

The silence this time lasted a long few seconds. For a moment, Erik thought he’d stunned them speechless, for once. But then Sebastian laughed, his tone derisive. “Yeah, I bet you do. I bet you like the way his ass—”

Erik hung up. The metal casing of the phone creaked a bit in his clenched fist, and he had to force himself to toss the phone back onto the table before he crushed it. Asshole. Sebastian was such an utter _asshole,_ and he wasn’t sure if he had changed or if he had always been that way and Erik was just now starting to notice. His phone rang again, but he silenced it with an irritated flick of his hand.

A hesitant touch brushed against his mind. _You okay?_

Erik started violently. “Could you not—”

“Sorry,” Charles called aloud from the kitchen. “But you’re projecting again. Everything all right?”

Erik took a deep, steadying breath and unclenched his fists. “Yeah, everything’s fine.” 

He could feel Charles’s skepticism even across the room, but Charles said nothing more. He brought out the pizza in a few minutes and laid Erik’s plate down in front of him. They ate in silence, Charles shooting Erik a half-curious, half-worried look now and then, Erik doing his best to empty his mind. 

When they finished, Erik offered to wash up the dishes, but Charles shook his head. “I’ll handle them later.” He deposited both of them in the sink and then turned around to face Erik, who was leaning against the oven. “You know, you’re welcome to stay a little longer if you want. But it’s getting late, and I really do need to get working.” 

Erik checked his watch. It was nearly 9:00. “Of course. I have things to do, too.” 

After he collected his coat from the back of the couch, Charles walked him to the door. Erik paused at the threshold, and Charles leaned up to give him a slow, lingering kiss. 

“I’ll see you later?” he asked. 

Charles nodded. “There’s actually a match this Saturday. You remember I told you I play football? Well, there’s a match Saturday afternoon. Would you come watch?”

Erik grinned at the idea. “Why would I miss an opportunity to see you run and get all sweaty and dirty? Text me the time and location.” 

“I will.” Charles smiled warmly. “Thanks for today. It was nice.” 

“It was,” Erik agreed. All they’d done was sprawl together on the couch and eat pizza afterwards, but it had been more pleasant than Erik had expected. 

Charles leaned against the door, his hand on the doorknob. “Good night then.” 

“Night.” 

Charles waited until he was down the hall before shutting the door. Erik heard and felt the lock click and latch. He followed the metal signature of Charles’s watch as he went through the apartment, pausing for a moment in the kitchen, then heading down the hall back to the study. As Charles settled himself behind his desk again, Erik released his hold on Charles’s watch, letting his metal awareness fade to the background of his mind. He took the elevator down to the ground floor, waited until the valet brought his car around, and then headed home.

* * *

Saturday dawned bright and sunny, though still chilly. Erik bundled up, wound Charles’s red scarf around his neck, and headed down to the fields behind the Student Union Building, where all intramural games of the morning were taking place.

He found Charles on Field 2, stretching in a pair of the most well-fitting white shorts Erik had ever seen. His mouth went dry at the sight of Charles bending over to stretch his hamstrings, his ass on display to the world, the shorts so tight that Erik thought he could see the outline of Charles’s underwear underneath. Half of him wanted to stand there and ogle him forever. The other half wanted to fly across the field and cover Charles up, because he could see at least a dozen other people staring straight at Charles as he stretched and that was unacceptable. 

Charles felt his thoughts and turned his head without straightening up. _Erik! You made it!_

Erik started to skirt around the field to reach him. _I did._

_And does my ass actually look that good in these shorts?_

_They do,_ Erik replied fervently. _You have no idea._

Charles’s laugh echoed in his head. _Thank you. The stands are over there. I can’t talk right now because the match is about to start, but I’ll see you afterwards._

 _Oh. Okay then._ Erik reversed his steps and headed to the other side of the field, where a sizeable crowd populated row of bleachers. He managed to squeeze into the front row next to a group of rowdy boys who were shoving each other playfully, though they quieted down a bit when Erik glared right at them. Erik didn’t follow football, but he knew enough about it to understand, courtesy of a father who had watched the Premier League religiously all through Erik’s childhood. Charles was a right winger, lining up close to the midfield. He glanced over at the stands as they waited to start and gave Erik a wave. Erik grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. Then the referee blew the whistle, and the game began. 

Barely five minutes in, Erik felt a tap on his shoulder and looked up to find a blond girl staring speculatively back down at him. “That’s my scarf,” she said. 

Erik blinked. “No, it’s mine.” 

“No, it’s not.” She plucked up one end of the scarf and picked at the stitching. “I’d know because I made it for my brother for Christmas two years ago. He told me he lent it to a friend. That’d be you, isn’t that right? And he told me that that friend is something more of a friend now, so am I right in guessing that you’re his boyfriend?” 

Erik stared at her for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly. “Yeah. I’m Erik.” 

The girl whistled, her eyebrows going up. “Charles told me you were hot, but he didn’t say you were _hot.”_ She plopped down on the bench next to him, even though there was barely enough space for her to perch on. “Hi, I’m Raven, his sister. Nice to meet you.” 

He shook her hand. “Hey. Charles told me a little about you.” 

“Well, he’s told me a _lot_ about you,” Raven replied. “He won’t shut up about Erik this, Erik that. And looking at you now, I can see why.” She gave him a blatantly suggestive look that nearly made him squirm and then turned her attention to the field. “You here to cheer him on?”

Erik nodded. “He asked me to come.” 

“Then get ready for a show,” Raven said with a grin. “Charles is good, and he’ll play even harder if he knows you’re watching.” 

She was right. Charles _was_ good. He was small but quick, with seemingly endless endurance that kept him racing back and forth from one side of the pitch to the other, covering defense, then pushing offense, then back to defense in the space of a minute. He was good with the ball, too, stripping it from the opponents with clean efficiency and directing passes to his teammates with pinpoint accuracy. The rest of his team was as skilled as he was or more, and within no time at all, they took the lead. 

By the time the halftime whistle blew, Charles’s team was up 4-0, with Charles netting one of the goals. He bounded over to them in the break, his face flushed in the cold and with exertion, his eyes bright. His eyes went directly to Erik, so it wasn’t until Raven cleared her throat that Charles snapped his gaze over to her. “Raven! Glad you could make it. Did you already meet Erik?”

“I did,” she confirmed. “He’s wearing my scarf.” 

“I told you I lent it to him for the winter,” Charles said, grinning. Turning to Erik, he asked, “So what do you think so far?”

“You’re very good,” Erik replied. Mentally, he added, _Am I allowed to say that I spent most of the half staring at you instead of paying attention to the game?_

The flush in Charles’s cheeks deepened. _Yes, you are._

 _You look good in that jersey._ Erik wanted to take it off him. With his teeth. 

Charles coughed, and Erik backtracked immediately. _Too fast?_

_A little, yeah. Sorry._

_No, I’m sorry. Okay. You look great out there._

_Thanks._ Charles’s smile returned full-force. “I’m glad you came. Do you want to go out afterwards? Get some lunch? If you don’t mind me a little sweaty, of course.”

Raven pouted. “Oh, so you get a boyfriend and you forget all about your poor, darling sister.” 

“I meant both of you,” Charles said wryly. 

“Oh. In that case, yes.” 

Erik nodded. “I’ll be free.” 

“Excellent.” Charles turned as one of his teammates shouted across the field for him to join them. “Okay, I have to go. I’ll see you after then.” 

“Good luck,” Raven said, shoving him toward the pitch by his shoulder. Charles grinned at Erik and then headed off again. 

“I haven’t seen him like this before,” Raven said fondly as she watched him go. 

Erik watched him, too, admiring the way the shorts pulled as Charles moved. And that jersey was just a little bit too tight, not that Erik was complaining. “Like what?”

“Happy like this.” She gave Erik a sideways glance. “He hasn’t been this happy in a long time.” 

It took him a moment to hear her implication. Surprised, he turned to look at her fully. “You aren’t saying that it’s me? That I’m why…” 

“What else could it be?” Raven asked. “He met you, he wouldn’t shut up about you, and now you’re dating and he _really_ won’t shut up about you, and he’s smiling like an idiot all the time. You’re good for him, you know. He’s always been my dorky older brother and he used to say that he didn’t have time for relationships because he was too busy—I don’t know—researching the cure for cancer or something. But now he has you, and he’s happy. Happier than he was with just his books. Happier than he’s been in a while.” 

Happier. Did Erik really have that effect on Charles? The thought warmed him. 

“So am I,” he said honestly. “He’s good for me, too.” 

Raven smiled. “Good.” 

Charles’s team ended up winning 8-2. Charles scored the last goal in the last minute of the game, much to the delight of the crowd. Raven clapped and hooted with the rest of them, shouting out Charles’s name, but when Charles spun to look over at the stands, his eyes searched out Erik, no one else. He smiled and Erik smiled back, and in that moment, Erik felt such a rush of affection for him that he nearly went breathless with it. 

“Lunch,” Charles said as soon as he neared them. “Sawyer’s?” 

Erik nodded and reached down to take his hand, something in his chest squeezing when Charles curled his fingers warmly around Erik’s without hesitation. “Sounds great.” 

They had lunch at Sawyer’s, where Raven peppered them both with questions almost the whole time, asking after every tiny detail of their relationship, from their first meeting to now. Charles told her about holding up the line at the bookstore because he hadn’t known how to use the register, and Erik told her how he’d jimmied the drawer open with his powers. He watched her closely when he mentioned his mutation, but no surprise crossed her face. So Charles had told her, and she was fine with it. Erik could have guessed that she was pro-mutant, if only because her brother was a mutant himself. He wondered if she were a mutant, too. She didn’t have any external mutations, which meant that if she had one, it was likely invisible, like Charles’s. 

They had to cut lunch short because Charles had to be at a lab at one-thirty. Outside on the sidewalk, Erik pulled Charles up short and kissed him long and hard, licking the lingering taste of deli sandwich off his lips. Raven shouted something that sounded like “Get a room!” but they both ignored her, and when they broke apart, Charles’s face was flushed again and his eyes were gleaming. “I’ll see you later?” he asked. “You could come over again later today, if you wanted.” 

Erik grinned. “Yeah. Six?” 

Charles beamed back at him. “Perfect.” 

Yes, Erik thought. Perfect. 

In that moment, everything was.

* * *

It was early November when Charles asked him out to dinner, which wasn’t unusual. What _was_ unusual was the restaurant Charles took him to, which was as intimidatingly high-end as any restaurant Erik had ever set foot in. Erik felt terribly out of place, even though he’d worn a suit at Charles’s request. Charles himself was outfitted in a tailored suit that hugged his body in all the right ways, making him look sleek and put-together in a way Erik had never seen him before. He had only ever seen Charles in his cardigans and slacks, t-shirts and jeans, and his football jersey. He had always looked like a student then. But now, in this suit, he looked older. He looked like a business executive, like he truly owned the company that had given him his fortune.

He certainly didn’t look as if he belonged with Erik. 

_Nonsense,_ Charles said as they took their reserved table by a window that gave them an unobstructed view of the street outside. _You look splendid._

Erik glanced down at himself, then at Charles’s neat suit, complete with a pocket square. _Right._

“You do,” Charles said aloud. “You look good. Almost makes me want to skip dinner.” 

There was an undercurrent of _something_ in his voice that made Erik look up from the menu. “You shouldn’t say things like that,” he said after a moment. 

Charles propped his elbow up on the table and leaned his cheek against his hand. “And why not?”

“Because,” Erik said, leaning closer, “then I’ll say things like this.” _I want to pull that tie off you with my teeth. I want to unbutton that shirt and see how far down those freckles go, trace them with my fingers and watch you smile._

It was relatively tame, compared to what he’d been thinking over these last few weeks. It had become something of a game to them, more flirting than a real attempt at seduction. Charles flushed each time, sometimes with clear want that drove Erik mad with frustration, trying to figure out why Charles wouldn’t give in, but he’d always gently turned Erik away. This time, though, something was different. This time, Charles didn’t rebuff him immediately; instead, he leaned forward, too, close enough for their noses to nearly touch, and whispered, “Maybe later tonight.” 

Shock streaked through Erik like a lightning bolt. “What?” he whispered back, hardly daring to believe. 

“You heard me,” Charles said, picking up his menu. 

Erik wanted to inquire further, but the waiter came by before he could and asked for their orders. Erik was too distracted to concentrate, so he chose the first dish that looked appetizing and handed the menu to the waiter. Then he sat impatiently as Charles ordered, and once they were alone again, he asked, “Are you serious?”

Charles nodded. “Very serious.” 

Erik’s heart leaped. “Tonight?”

“Yeah. After dinner. Will you come back to my place?”

“Of course. Of _course._ ” How long had he been waiting for this? How long had he been wanting _more,_ but had waited and tried not to push because Charles had asked him to? And now the moment had come. It was going to happen _tonight._

Erik could barely taste the meal. His stomach was so twisted up in anticipation and excitement that he might have been eating lead for all he knew and cared. Charles carried most of the conversation discussing one of his new procedures in his latest lab, this one involving Hank as an undergrad research assistant. Then he switched to talking about the Manifesto and what he had written this week, but for once, Erik couldn’t get into the debate. His answers were half-hearted and he couldn’t remember any statistics off the top of his head. Finally, Charles put his fork down and said, “You aren’t going to be much use talking right now, are you?”

Erik blinked. “What?” 

Charles laughed. “You proved my point. Let’s get the check and get out of here.” 

They ended up splitting the check, as they usually did, and Erik winced at the bill. “Was it really necessary to have dinner here?”

Charles gave him a strange look as they stood to leave. “You didn’t like it?”

“No, it was fine,” Erik assured him, putting a hand on Charles’s elbow to steer him through the maze of tables toward the door. “Just a little…” 

“Crowded?”

He exhaled. “Expensive.” 

“Oh.” Charles went very quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I chose this place because my mother always took me to this restaurant on my birthday when I was younger. It’s sort of a tradition, I guess. I’m sorry if you didn’t like it.” 

It took a moment for those words to register. When they did, Erik whirled, his eyes wide. “It’s your _birthday?”_

Charles smiled. “Twenty-one.” 

“Charles! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did. I’m telling you now.” 

“I mean, _earlier.”_ Erik groaned and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I could’ve gotten you something. I should’ve gotten you something.” 

“You are. At least, I hope you will.” Charles slipped his hand into Erik’s, tangling their fingers together. “I was hoping you’d…Well.” _Take off my suit with your teeth?_

Erik shivered with arousal at the mere thought. “If that’s what you want.” 

“It’s what I want.” 

“Then let’s go.” 

Erik hauled him to the car and barely waited until Charles had snapped his seatbelt in place before pulling out and racing off down the street. He couldn’t keep his eyes off Charles. He kept glancing at him out of the corner of his eye, and Charles was always looking back at him, his expression eager and nervous in turns, his hands tapping restlessly on his knees. They made it to Charles’s apartment in record time, and Erik couldn’t be blamed if he urged the elevator on a little faster than it was intended to go. Once the elevator doors opened, he and Charles all but sprinted down the hall to 278A. Charles started to go for his key, but Erik impatiently unlocked the door with a wave of his hand, and they were in. 

The instant the door closed behind them, Erik was on Charles in a flash, pushing him up against the wall and kissing him hungrily. Charles dropped his keys to the floor with a loud clatter and wound his hands up Erik’s neck and into his hair. His legs pushed forward, one of them sliding between Erik’s, brushing up against Erik’s groin. They both groaned at the contact, Erik already half-hard with want. He could feel Charles’s erection as well, swelling against his thigh. 

“Bedroom?” Erik whispered. 

Charles nodded, his usually-bright eyes now dark. “Bedroom.” 

They stumbled their way down the hall, kissing all the way, pressed so close together that their legs tangled up more than once and they nearly fell. The bedroom was the one place in the apartment that Erik hadn’t seen before, and once they crossed the threshold, he had eyes for only one thing: the four-poster queen-sized bed against the wall, plenty big enough for two. He backed Charles up against the backboard and then gave him a little shove so that he fell over onto the mattress on his back. Charles shimmied up toward the pillows, sinking into the cream-colored duvet as he went, his eyes pinned on Erik’s. Erik kicked off his shoes and climbed in after him, needing to touch, barely able to keep away. He kissed Charles again, hard enough for his stubble to scrape Charles’s cheek, earning him a tiny noise of displeasure. 

_You need a shave,_ Charles said, even as he kissed Erik back. 

_You like how I look with stubble._

_I’d like it better if it weren’t taking my skin off._ Charles ran his fingers along Erik’s jaw, then trailed them lower, to the knot of his tie. After a second of hesitation, he pulled at it until it loosened, then came apart entirely. Erik returned the favor, making quick work of Charles’s own tie and leaving the collar of his dress shirt open enough to give him access to Charles’s collarbones. Charles tilted his head back and moaned as Erik bent down to suck on his neck, and the sound shot straight to Erik’s cock. He rolled his hips a little, his hard length rubbing through his pants up against the duvet. Not enough friction. Not nearly enough. 

Charles panted above him, his excitement and desire bleeding over into Erik’s mind and feeding Erik’s own exhilaration. He wanted to be naked now. He wanted to touch every inch of Charles’s skin he could, kiss and stroke it and mark it as his own. Charles moaned again in response to that thought, and Erik sat up, stripping off his jacket and throwing it somewhere off the bed. He couldn’t get his clothes off fast enough. As he yanked off his shirt, Charles shrugged out of his own jacket and started to unbutton his shirt. Erik stopped him with a shake of his head and reached down with eager hands to pop each button open, one at a time, admiring the slow reveal of Charles’s chest, all smooth white skin and freckles. _Freckles._ Erik laughed and touched a burst of freckles by Charles’s shoulder. “So they do go all the way down.” 

“And lower,” Charles said with a wicked grin. Erik sucked in a breath and finished unbuttoning Charles’s shirt, pulling it unceremoniously from his torso and tossing it to the side with the rest of their clothes. He let his hands roam over Charles’s skin, following his fingers with kisses, down his neck, down the line of his flat belly, then back up to circle one nipple. Charles inhaled sharply as Erik set his mouth to his nipple, tugging with his teeth until Charles keened aloud and then soothing the skin with his tongue. He did it twice more until Charles was gasping hard for breath beneath him, and then he switched his attention to the other side. 

“God, Erik,” Charles breathed, his chest heaving. _“God.”_

 _Good?_ Erik thought at him. 

“What do you— _uhh_ —think?”

Erik smirked and gave his nipple one last twist before skimming his lips lower, pressing light kisses to the gentle slope of Charles’s ribs. Charles shuddered, his hands clenching in the duvet. Then Erik hooked his fingers into the waistband of Charles’s pants and bent to kiss the bulge of Charles’s cock through his pants, and Charles bucked helplessly, a soft whine escaping from between his clenched teeth. 

“Do you—” Erik said, suddenly uncertain. “What do you want me to do?” How far did Charles want to go tonight? 

Charles didn’t even hesitate. _Fuck me. I want you to fuck me._

If Erik hadn’t been hard before, he was certainly hard now. It took a moment to struggle out of his uncomfortably tight pants, and Charles’s eyes widened as Erik stripped off his boxers as well and tossed them away. Erik’s cock was already leaking, stiff and straining toward his belly. Erik resisted the urge to give it a quick stroke and leaned down instead to kiss Charles again, unbuckling Charles’s belt with an impatient flick of his fingers. Charles reached down to help him shove his pants and underwear down in one quick motion, and then they were both gloriously naked. Erik stopped for a moment to look at him, to just stare and memorize because he wanted to remember this. He wanted to know Charles’s body better than his own, wanted to know all its secrets, all the places that could take Charles apart. Charles’s cock curved up, hard and beautifully flushed and probably aching to be touched. But Charles didn’t move as Erik looked his fill, as if waiting for Erik’s verdict. 

“Well?” he said finally. 

“Well what?” Erik asked, touching the inside of Charles’s thigh and sliding his hand up. “You’re gorgeous.” 

Charles smiled, a pleased blush crawling up his neck. “So are you.” 

Erik ran his hand over the curve of Charles’s hip and paused there, long enough for Charles to bite out, “Will you _touch_ me already?” 

Erik grinned. “Should I?”

“Yes, you sh—ahh!” 

His hands fisted tightly in the duvet as Erik stroked him, lightly enough so that the dry drag of his palm was more uncomfortable than painful. After a few moments, he thumbed the slit of Charles’s cock, using a bit of the precome to slick his way. But it still wasn’t enough to make the slide of his hand comfortable, so he asked, “Do you have lube?”

Charles nodded and pointed to the drawer of his nightstand. Erik swung off him, fetched the bottle, and returned to straddle Charles’s legs. 

“Only half-full?” he asked as he popped the cap. 

Charles grinned. “You don’t really think I’m all chaste and innocent, do you?”

Erik groaned. “No.” Not with a sly grin like that, he wasn’t. He squeezed lube out onto his palm and onto Charles’s cock and started to pump again. This time, Charles moaned, low and wanton. Erik ignored the throb of heat in his own groin and asked, “Better?”

“Yes,” Charles panted. “Better.” 

He stroked Charles up and up and up, until every muscle in Charles’s body was taut with arousal, until every sound that came from his lips was a whimper. Then he eased back down, slowing his pace until he released Charles entirely. Charles dazedly lifted his head from the pillow and watched as Erik slicked up his fingers again and then shifted between his legs. 

“You sure?” Erik asked as he slid one wet finger down the crack of Charles’s ass and stopping at his hole. 

Charles shivered for a second, his eyes shutting. Then he opened them and nodded. “Yeah.” 

Erik pressed in. He barely managed to get to his first knuckle before he couldn’t go any further, even with the lube. “Hey,” he said, putting his free hand on Charles’s knee. “Relax.” 

Charles took a couple of shallow breaths before going limp, the tension in his muscles releasing. “Better,” Erik said, gently working his finger in. “Tell me if it hurts, okay? I’m going slow.” 

Charles nodded wordlessly and kept his eyes on Erik’s face as Erik patiently worked him open. It took a long few minutes before Charles was ready to take another finger. When he felt the second, he tensed automatically, and Erik stopped. _Relax._

_Sorry. Just…one second._

He waited until finally Charles wriggled his hips and nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Erik pushed the second finger in and used his other hand to rub soothing circles on Charles’s knee. “Tell me if it’s too much.” 

“I’m fine,” Charles panted. “Keep going.” 

Erik eased both of his fingers in, fighting the tight clench of Charles’s body. Eventually, he made enough room to scissor his fingers a bit, pushing in and up until Charles let out a ragged cry and arched up off the bed. Pleasure burst across Erik’s mind like blazing comets, and he found himself just as breathless as Charles. He had to lean over to catch himself with his free hand, dizzy with an arousal not entirely his own. 

“Sorry,” Charles said when he could speak again. “Sorry. I can—tone it down—”

“No. No, it’s fine. Are you okay? To keep going, I mean?”

Charles shifted his hips. He wasn’t completely hard anymore, but Erik wasn’t surprised; the initial stretch had to be at least a little painful, for all that Erik was trying to keep it from being too rough. After a moment, Charles said, “Yes,” and then Erik scissored his fingers again, slowly, keeping at it until he managed to work Charles open enough to take another finger. He could only get the third in halfway, but it was enough for now. He spread Charles open little by little, until it looked as if he might be able to take Erik’s cock, with some effort. Still, he kept thrusting his fingers in, trying to prep him better, just a bit more. He had no idea where this patience was coming from. He had never been so careful with anyone else before, and yet here he was, willing to kneel between Charles’s legs until he was absolutely sure Charles could take him. 

Eventually, Charles said, “I think I’m ready.” 

Erik glanced up. “You’re sure?” 

“No one takes this long to prep,” Charles said, his answering smile fond and warm. “Thank you. Yes, I’m sure.” 

Erik studied him for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Condoms?”

“Where the lube was.” 

Erik yanked the drawer open by its metal handle and got off Charles to dig around inside until he came up with the foil packet. Tearing it open, he rolled the condom onto his stiff cock and then squeezed out more lube onto his fingers to slick himself up. Then he climbed back onto the bed and settled between Charles’s legs. 

“Tell me if it’s too much,” Erik breathed as he took his cock in hand and positioned the tip at Charles’s entrance. “If it hurts—”

“Erik,” Charles interrupted, grinning. “I’ll tell you. Now do it, will you?”

Erik pushed in the first inch. Charles was still too tight, even with the fingering and the lube, and Erik made to pull out again. “You’re too tight, I’m going to hurt you—”

“Erik,” Charles said, exasperated now. “Trust me to tell you if it’s too much, all right? I know my own boundaries. Now will you just fuck me already?”

Hesitantly, he pushed in a little further. Charles helpfully remained relaxed and loose-limbed beneath him, though his fingers were white-knuckled where they dug into the duvet. He watched Charles’s face carefully as he eased in, ready to stop in an instant if he saw any pain there. Charles winced a couple of times but remained otherwise silent as Erik entered him. When he was buried to the hilt, he stopped to let both of them catch their breaths. 

“Okay?” he asked. 

Charles nodded. “I’m okay.” 

Erik pulled out slightly and gave an experimental thrust. Pleasure arced up his spine at even that tiny motion, and Charles groaned. “Yeah, that’s good.” 

“Good for you or good for me?” Erik panted, sweat trickling down the flat plane of his stomach as he held himself still again. 

“Good for you is good for me,” Charles answered. Before Erik could protest, he added, “But yes, good for me, too. It, ah, hurts a little, but it’s not bad. Keep going.” 

Erik withdrew a little and thrust again. Slowly, he started a steady rhythm that picked up speed once both of them got comfortable. Charles lifted his legs to wrap them around Erik’s waist, his heels digging into Erik’s ass as Erik fucked him. He leaned up to suck at Erik’s neck, definitely hard enough to leave a hickey later, and Erik let out a harsh gasp into his ear. Each thrust seemed to punch the breath from Charles’s lungs, at first in soft whimpers, then in progressively louder moans. When Erik curved his hips up, cock driving in at a sharp angle, Charles cried out hoarsely, and blinding pleasure burned its way across Erik’s mind, so powerful that he nearly came right then and there. 

_Again,_ Charles said, and even his mental voice shook. _Right there._

Erik obliged, seeking that searing, shared pleasure, and it burst between them again and again and again, each time ramping up in intensity until Erik was pounding hard into Charles’s body, coming rapidly undone together. He reached down with one hand and threaded his fingers tightly through Charles’s and felt Charles squeeze back. “Yes,” Charles whispered in his ear. “Erik.” 

He came apart at his name, his hips stuttering through an orgasm that hit him so hard that for a moment, he couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even think through the mind-numbing pleasure. He wasn’t sure how much of that was natural and how much of it was Charles’s mind blending with his, but a moment later, he felt another crest of pleasure, so forceful that he couldn’t help the low, shocked moan that tore from his throat. It was Charles’s orgasm, he realized, and when he came back to himself some interminable time later, he looked down to find that Charles had come across their bellies, streaks of white hot against their skin. 

Erik felt his muscles go weak, and he collapsed on top of Charles, unable to even shift off and away. Charles panted sharply in his ear and he knew he should get off, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t do anything but lie there and try to remember how to breathe. 

“Sorry,” he whispered after a moment. “I’ll get off in a second. Let me just…” 

Charles laughed breathlessly. “I know.” 

“That was…” It was the best orgasm he’d ever had. Maybe it was the telepathy, a shared experience in the truest sense, but he knew that the telepathy wasn’t all. It was Charles, warm and boneless in his arms, gasping in his ear, flushed red and beautiful. He never wanted to let go. 

“Yeah,” Charles agreed. “It was.” 

Eventually, he recovered enough to pull out and take off the condom. As he tied it off and threw it away, Charles went to fetch a hand towel from the adjoining bathroom. They cleaned up thoroughly, touches suddenly, strangely shy. Erik was used to a quick fuck and then sliding his clothes on and leaving without a backward glance. But once Charles had put the towel away, he climbed back into bed and gave Erik a hopeful look. “Stay?”

Erik blinked. “For the night?”

“Yeah.” Charles kicked the duvet, stained through with sweat from both their bodies, off the bed and slid under the sheets underneath. Patting the space next to him, he added, “Please.” 

It wasn’t much of a choice. He returned to the bed and curled up beside Charles, who grinned happily at him and flopped down. It wasn’t even midnight yet, but Charles yawned twice as he snuggled into Erik’s arms, his eyes drifting shut. He was asleep within minutes.

Erik stayed awake for a long while. His mind kept turning back to the bet. He’d done it. He’d fulfilled his end. All he had to do now was slip out of bed, grab Charles’s underwear from the floor, and leave. Sebastian would be delighted. He’d hand over the necklace as promised, and Erik would have a beautiful gift for his mother in January. Janos and Azazel would be impressed, too. Charles was dead asleep, barely moving as Erik shifted away and sat up. Erik would be long gone before Charles realized anything was wrong. 

He remained there for a long few minutes, listening to Charles breathe. Even in the darkness, he could see Charles’s white underwear on the floor, just beyond the foot of the bed. 

No. 

He laid back down and pulled up the covers. Leaning over and wrapping one arm around Charles’s stomach, he pressed a kiss to the side of Charles’s mouth and whispered, “Happy birthday.” 

Then he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

* * *

When he got home the next morning, Sebastian was waiting.

“You didn’t come back last night,” he said, his grin gleeful. “You did it, didn’t you?” 

Erik ran a weary hand over his face. “Leave it alone, Sebastian.” 

“You _did!”_ Sebastian laughed aloud. “Azazel! Janos! Get out here! Our boy did it!” 

The two of them appeared in the living room in an instant, their eyes wide. “You did?” Janos asked eagerly. “Tell us everything.” 

“Show us the underwear,” Azazel urged. 

“Oh yes,” Janos said, hurrying forward. “Where’s the proof?” 

“I didn’t bring any,” Erik said, irritation beginning to stir in his chest. 

“Didn’t bring—” Janos crossed his arms. “Then we don’t believe you.” 

“I don’t give a fuck if you believe me or not,” Erik retorted, brushing past them. “I’m going to take a shower.” 

“Hang on there,” Sebastian said, snagging his arm as he tried to pass. “You were with him last night, weren’t you? So what happened? You chicken out?” 

Erik tried to shake him off. “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Did he reject you?” Azazel laughed, the broad smile pulling at the scars on his face. “Tell you you weren’t his type?”

“Erik Lehnsherr, rejected!” Janos crowed. 

“No,” Sebastian said, tilting his head as he scrutinized Erik closely. “No, that’s not it. You _did_ fuck him, didn’t you?” He reached up and pushed aside Erik’s collar, and his expression split into a wry smile. “Yes, you did.” 

Erik knew what he saw there. He could remember the feel of Charles’s lips there even now, sucking in a bruise. He yanked his collar up to cover it and turned on his heel. “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“That’s fine,” Sebastian called after him as he strode down the hall. “But you lose the bet.” 

“I don’t give a _fuck_ about the bet!” 

“And I guess you won’t give a fuck about the kid either, now that you’re done with him.” 

Erik froze.

“I want him,” Sebastian continued behind him. “He hangs out at the library, isn’t that right? And the Student Union Building? I’ve seen him there a couple of—”

“You touch him,” Erik snarled, whipping around again, “and I’ll break your fucking nose.” 

Azazel and Janos went silent, shock evident on their faces. Sebastian’s eyes widened. “What?” 

“I said,” Erik repeated, more quietly this time, “don’t touch him.” 

For a moment, they didn’t seem to know how to respond. Then Sebastian’s lips curved back up into a smile that was entirely too knowing for Erik’s liking. “Well, well. You _like_ him, don’t you?”

He thought about denying it, but that would do no good. It was too obvious, from his reactions. He couldn’t control himself over Charles, and they saw it. 

“So what?” he bit out. “So I like him.” _More than you know._

“So,” Sebastian drawled, “how _much_ do you like him? You’ve skipped half a dozen Brotherhood meetings for him already. I thought it was because you really wanted to win this bet. But it’s because of him, isn’t it?” 

Erik didn’t meet his eyes. “I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.” 

Sebastian tsk-ed. “Come on, Erik. Open your eyes. This—whatever you had with this kid—it wasn’t real. It was for the bet. For that pretty necklace you wanted.” 

“No,” he said firmly. “It wasn’t.” 

Azazel laughed. “You really think you like him? Think he likes you?”

“I told you he’s a flirt,” Janos said. “Probably flirted you all the way into his bed. Is he that good? Pulled the wool over your eyes?”

“Charles isn’t like that,” he snapped. 

“Defensive,” Sebastian said, raising his eyebrows. After a moment, he sighed and said, “Look, Erik. It was fun for a while. You went for months with it. The challenge was good, wasn’t it? I told you it’d be. But that’s enough now, enough fooling around. I need you with me. You’re my right-hand man in the Brotherhood, and you can’t be distracted by a fling.” 

“Charles is not a fling,” he growled. 

Sebastian groaned. “Of course he is. What did you think? You were going to get together? Live happily ever after? I guarantee you, Charles is just some kid who wants to get ahead and let you fuck him to do it. Or he was looking for some fun. Played the hard-to-get game and did it really well.” At Erik’s glare, he said, “Don’t believe me? Watch me talk to him. He’ll play the same game with me. And then he’ll let me fuck him, just like he let you. It’s a game we’ll both win—”

“For fuck’s sake,” Erik shouted. “Not everything’s a _game_ , Sebastian! I like him, okay? I like him a lot. I think I might even love him, so shut your _fucking_ mouth before I hurt you.” 

“You might even—” Sebastian threw back his head and laughed. “God, Erik, what happened to you? You don’t seriously think…” His smile faded as he took in Erik’s expression. “You aren’t _serious?”_

“I’m serious,” he said flatly, and he was. That was the name for what he felt for Charles. That was the truth and nothing but. “So shut the fuck up.” 

They stared at him. He knew they didn’t understand. He’d spent four years with them cruising around, picking up girls and boys who hadn’t even known his name the morning after, hadn’t bothered to ask. They gloried in the freedom of it, in how little effort it took to use someone’s body and be gone before the sun came up. They didn’t know what it felt like to look at someone and, for once, want to _stay_. 

“He’s a mutant, isn’t he?” Azazel asked into the stunned silence. “What’s his power? Did he mess your brain up? Because this isn’t the Erik Lehnsherr I know.” 

“Yes, did he mess up your mind?” Sebastian asked, his voice turned to ice. Erik had heard him use this tone on countless of people but never on him. Sebastian crossed his arms and leveled a cold, dispassionate look at him. “Did he play _you_ , Erik?”

“Did he fool you with _love_?” Janos jeered. 

Erik stared at them for a long moment. They were strangers, he realized. These boys who had been his friends since he first arrived in his freshman year were utter strangers to him. He didn’t know them anymore, and he didn’t want to know them anymore. The anger leached away, replaced by a solid, steely resolve that solidified in his gut. He turned around and walked to his room. 

“Where are you going?” Sebastian demanded. “We aren’t finished.”

He pulled out his suitcase and dumped his drawers into it. Clothes, toiletries, the essentials—everything else he could get later. Now, he just wanted to get out of here. His books and papers could wait. 

He was packed in five minutes. When he dragged the suitcase out, Sebastian barred his way. “Where do you think you’re going?” he hissed. 

“I’m leaving,” he said firmly. “You assholes take care of yourselves.” 

“Oh, come on,” Janos said, sliding off his perch on the couch. “Don’t be like that. We were just having some fun.” At his side, Azazel nodded. 

Sebastian stared hard at him, his frown deepening when Erik glowered back. He looked for a moment like he might stop Erik by force. Erik clenched his fist, ready to call every piece of metal in the room to him. Sebastian’s mutation was powerful, he knew, but even he couldn’t get up instantly from having a TV smashed over his head. The iron-wrought hallway table creaked forward half an inch, and somewhere, a light bulb shattered. 

Sebastian stepped back. “Leave then,” he said coldly. 

Janos shot him a confused look. “What—”

Sebastian cut him off with jerk of his head. “If he wants to leave, then let him. We don’t need people like him here. _Weak._ ”

Erik bristled but didn’t reply. He stalked past all of them and out the door. 

He didn’t look back.

* * *

He figured later, once he had calmed down a bit, that maybe he should have thought this through a little better. Now he had nothing but a suitcase and nowhere to go. He could always crash in his car, but that would get uncomfortable very quickly. It would be easier to ask Charles if he could stay for a few days. No doubt Charles would welcome him in, tell him to stay as long as he needed. It was his best—and the most appealing—option.

He’d ask Charles later, he decided. There was a football game at four in the afternoon, and Erik would see him then. In the meantime, he killed three hours of time at the library, half-heartedly looking over his textbook in preparation for an exam the following week. It was Mutant Studies again and Dunn would probably flunk him regardless of what he wrote, but at least memorizing statutes of the MRA kept his mind busy. 

At 3:45, he headed over to the fields, bundled up again in Charles’s scarf. It was warm and smelled faintly of him. Erik was startled to find that he missed Charles already, though they’d only been apart for less than twenty-four hours. He wanted to envelop Charles into a hug, bury his nose into that dark hair of his and inhale his scent and forget everything else. And the thing was, he _could_ , as soon as he found Charles. The thought made him quicken his step. 

Raven was already there when he arrived. She’d claimed a seat in the front row and graciously saved a spot for him next to her. 

“Hey,” he said as he sat down. 

“Hey yourself.” Raven gave him a sly grin. “Did something happen between you and Charles?”

Erik tried not to react. “What?”

Her grin widened. “Something did, didn’t it? That’s why he was smiling like that this morning. I had breakfast with him, and he was all dopey, staring off into space and forgetting what he was saying.” 

Erik looked away, though it was hard not to smile at the thought of Charles daydreaming. “No comment.” 

“Jerk,” Raven said, but her tone was affectionate and she scooted a little closer to him, leaning into him for warmth. 

A moment later, both teams appeared on the field and began to stretch. Erik, as always, only had eyes for Charles, who looked particularly fine in his kit today. As he bent over, those white shorts pulling tight, Erik could feel his cock twitch in his pants. He remembered that ass very fondly, the clench of it around him, the warmth. Maybe later, he thought. They could definitely go for a repeat of last night, maybe when Charles was sweaty from the pitch and needed a shower. A long, hot shower. 

His thoughts were interrupted by the shouts of the referees. They were telling someone that only teams could be on the field, no one else, no spectators, since the game was about to start. Erik glanced around for the disturbance, spotted it, and felt his stomach turn to lead. 

He was off the bench in an instant, rocketing across the field toward Charles. But Sebastian reached him first, seizing Charles by the arm and pulling him up. Charles let out a startled cry and said, “Let go of me,” but Sebastian shook him and said, “Listen to me for a second. I’m doing you a favor here. You know Erik Lehnsherr?”

“What? Of course I know Erik. He’s my—”

“He’s been playing you, kid.” The ice in Sebastian’s voice melted, turning falsely sweet, sickeningly kind. “Look, here’s the truth. I didn’t want to tell you this but here it is. Erik’s a good friend of mine. My roommate in fact. And he’s—”

“Get your hands off him,” Erik snarled, breaking in between them. He tried to pull Sebastian away, but his grip around Charles’s arm only tightened and Charles hissed in pain. “Let him _go.”_

Charles’s teammates were on their feet now, trying to break them apart. But Sebastian yelled, “You want to know the truth, Charles? You think you know Erik? You don’t. He’s been lying to you this whole time. He’s a _liar.”_

Erik grabbed his shoulder furiously. “Get your fucking hands—”

“Erik, wait.” 

He froze. Charles was looking quizzically at Sebastian, whose face filled with triumph. He shook off Charles’s teammates, who fell away, confused. For a moment, nobody moved. 

Finally, Charles asked, “What are you talking about?” 

“I’m talking about the fact that I made a bet with Erik at the beginning of the semester,” Sebastian said. “We saw you at the bookstore. I made a bet with him that he couldn’t get you to sleep with him. He agreed. For this.” 

He threw something at Charles’s feet. Before it landed, Erik knew what it was. Still he looked, his stomach heaving. One silver necklace lay in the grass, gleaming in the sunlight. 

“That’s what he wanted,” Sebastian said. “So he seduced you. Last night, he fucked you, and this morning, he told us all about it. He came to claim his prize, but I didn’t let him have it. I told him it was wrong, that he shouldn’t have done that to you. Not for a lousy necklace—”

“You’re a fucking liar!” Erik shouted, throwing himself forward. He had his hands around Sebastian’s neck, but Sebastian shoved him in the shoulder. It wouldn’t have even fazed him normally, but Sebastian’s power made it feel as if a car had struck him. He flew backwards and hit the ground hard enough to drive all the breath from his lungs, his vision spinning and the entire left half of his body paralyzed with pain. 

“Erik!” 

He forced himself to sit up, his eyes watering with the effort. “Charles,” he managed. “He’s lying.” 

But Charles didn’t look at him. Sebastian had let him go, but he wasn’t moving toward Erik. He wasn’t moving at all. For an interminable moment, he just stood there, motionless, his eyes fixed on the necklace in the grass. 

“For this necklace,” he said. 

“Charles—”

“Look me in the eye.” He turned, the movement jerky, desperate. “Erik, look me in the eye and tell me the truth.” 

“The truth? The truth is, he’s lying!” 

“And there never was any bet?” 

“There wasn’t a _bet!”_

Charles’s face crumpled. For a devastating second, Erik thought he might cry. But he didn’t. He said, his voice trembling, “I saw. In his mind and in yours. And only one of you is telling the truth.” 

Sebastian’s eyes widened. “Telepath?” he said incredulously. He began to laugh. “Erik, you managed to make a fool of a _telepath?_ You made him think you were in love with him, you let him think that you actually cared. God, you’re better than I thought.” 

Erik climbed to his knees, then to his feet. “Charles, please.” 

“You lied to me,” Charles said. His face was red, red with humiliation. “I was a _bet?_ I looked like a—a _sweet piece of ass_ and that was why—that was—”

His blood turned to ice. Those had been Janos’s words. God, had Charles heard everything? Had he gone back into Sebastian’s mind that far, seen it all? 

“Yes, I did,” Charles said unsteadily. “And I—I thought—” His voice choked off. He looked in that moment so hurt, so shattered, that Erik wanted to take him into his arms and rock him until that pain in his eyes eased. 

Charles flinched at the thought. For a second, Erik thought he might say something more, demand another explanation. But instead, he bent over, picked up his shin guards and socks from the grass, and walked away. He had to pass Erik to do it, and as he did, Erik reached out and caught his wrist. “Please. Please listen to me.” 

Charles swallowed hard. This close, Erik could see that he was shaking. He could feel it in the rapid pulse under his fingertips, drumming so quickly that he thought Charles might fly apart. 

“You know, Erik,” he said, and his eyes, when he fixed them on Erik, were blazing, even as the rest of him shook, “let me tell you something.” He leaned in, mouth close to Erik’s neck, close to the mark he had left there last night. “You were my first.” 

Erik swayed on his feet. Charles pulled his wrist free and walked away.

* * *

He didn’t see Charles again for the rest of the semester, though not for lack of trying. The thing about trying to stalk a telepath was that the telepath always knew when you were coming. He sat frustrated outside of the study rooms for hours, but Charles must have moved his sessions somewhere else because he was never there. He tried the Student Union Building to no avail. He even parked outside Charles’s apartment building until security came and told him in no uncertain terms to leave before he was arrested for loitering. It was clear that he would have to wait for Charles to come to him, if he decided to come at all.

He didn’t go back to Sebastian. Instead, he put himself up in a hotel for as long as he could manage it and then he slept in his car. There was nothing to do about it. He’d have to find new roommates because he couldn’t afford an apartment on his own. Next semester, he thought. Right now, he was too tired to try to find friends. Too tired and angry and guilty. 

He took his finals half-heartedly and failed two of them. But the most hilarious thing was, he wrote his Mutant Studies essay using the ideas he’d gleaned from Charles in their debates together and earned his first A from Dunn. It was an A+, too, and when he saw his grade, he laughed and laughed until he felt like crying, because even now Charles was helping him and Erik missed him so much sometimes that he couldn’t breathe. 

It wasn’t until December 8, a day before he was set to go home to spend winter break with his mother, that he heard that Charles was leaving. He was sitting in the Student Union Building poking at his lunch when he heard a familiar voice at the table behind him. Turning, he spotted a curly redhead seated with a group of his friends. Sean, he remembered. The kid Charles had tutored in calculus. 

“It’s really too bad,” Sean was saying. “I’m taking Calc II next year, and I’m going to need help. All the other tutors suck.” 

“But is it for sure?” the blond kid next to him asked. 

Sean nodded. “He finished his dissertation. Defended it and everything. He shook my hand and told me good luck. Said he was leaving by the end of the semester.” 

Before he knew what he was doing, Erik leaned across and grabbed Sean by the shoulder. 

“Hey, what the—”

“You’re talking about Charles?” he asked. “Charles Xavier?”

Sean shoved at his hand. “Get off me, you douchebag. I heard what you did to him. Leave him the fuck alone.” 

“He’s leaving?” Erik pressed. When Sean didn’t reply immediately, Erik tightened his watch around his wrist, cinching it until Sean cried out. 

“What the fuck, man!” he spat. “Yeah, it’s true. He’s done here. He’s leaving, like, in the next week. Now let me go so I can punch you in your fucking face—”

Erik ignored him. He was out the door in a second and in his car, turning it on with a flick of his hand instead of the keys.

He ran two red lights and nearly broke a streetlamp, but he made it to Charles’s place in under seven minutes. He’d sat outside a dozen times since the last time he’d seen Charles, and he’d tried once or twice to enter. The doorman had turned him away every time. Whether it was because of some building policy about strangers or because Charles had personally asked him to, Erik didn’t know. This time, he didn’t even pause for the valet, just hopped straight of out of his car and past the doorman before anyone could so much as shout. He could hear the doorman calling for security, but he bolted up into the elevator and slammed the doors shut before anyone could catch him. 

In the silence, he tried to wrap his mind around it. But it made no sense. Charles, leaving. No, this wasn’t right. Where would he go? And was he even going to say goodbye? Had he planned to? 

He squeezed out of the elevator before the doors had even fully opened and ran down the hall, stopping only to catch his breath at Charles’s door and then knocking hard. “Charles? Charles, come on. I know you’re in there.” He could feel that distinctive watch, curled warmly around Charles’s wrist. If he’d wanted to, he could have pulled Charles to the door by that watch, but he didn’t. Instead, he leaned his head against the door, listening. “Charles, please. I just want to talk.” 

_Well, I don’t._ The voice in his head, after so much silence, startled him. And it wasn’t gentle at all, it was cold. 

“Charles. Please.” If Charles didn’t answer, he’d sit here until either the door opened or security came to drag him away. He wasn’t going to let Charles go anywhere without speaking to him at least once more, if not to explain then to apologize. He had to at least apologize for what he’d done, for everything. 

There was a long silence. Then, finally: _Let yourself in._

Erik unlocked the door quickly and stepped inside. What he saw made his stomach lurch. 

Everything was packed. Boxes sat stacked in the hall, suitcases propped neatly next to them. When he ventured in further, he could see that the living room was clean of personal effects and that the kitchen was empty. Everything was clean, impersonal. 

He followed the trail of Charles’s watch to his study and stopped dead in the doorway. 

Gone was the clutter. Gone were the stacks of books and scattered papers. The place was spotless, gleaming, the carpet rolled up and set aside, the bookshelves empty of Charles’s books, Charles’s touch. Empty of Charles. 

Charles, who was standing with his back to him, sliding a file into a box. 

“You’re leaving?” Erik managed finally, staring at the rigid line of Charles’s back. 

“Yes.” 

“And the—the apartment—”

“I’m selling it, finally. Got a buyer in last week. I think the deal’s going to close.” 

Erik swallowed. He was selling the apartment. That meant he wasn’t planning to come back, was he? 

“No,” Charles said, “I’m not.” 

Erik sat down hard in the chair. For a long moment, he couldn’t speak. There were so many things he had left to say. So many explanations, so many words. He wanted to tell Charles the truth. He wanted to tell Charles that he hadn’t spoken to Sebastian since what had happened at the football match. He wanted to tell Charles that he was sorry, he was so sorry, and that it had been real. More than anything, it had been real, at least to him, at least now, more than ever. 

Charles exhaled slowly, his hands stilling. “I know.” 

Erik blinked. “What?”

“I know,” Charles repeated quietly. “What you want to say, I know.” 

Erik stood. “Then you know Sebastian was lying.” 

“Not about everything.” 

He winced. “No, not about everything. The bet was real, but not the whole time. Once I got to know you, everything changed.” He stepped forward to the corner of the desk, his voice earnest. “It wasn’t about the bet when I kissed you the first time, and it wasn’t about the bet the night of your birthday. That was us. That was real.” 

Charles sighed, the straight line of his shoulders sagging. “I don’t know, Erik,” he said tiredly. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.” 

“Believe me,” Erik said, closing the distance between them. “Here.” He took Charles’s hand and pointed to his head. “Look.”

“Erik…” 

“Please.” 

Charles gazed at him for a long moment. He looked different now, even just a few weeks later. There were sleepless circles under his eyes, and his mouth had an unhappy tilt to it, as if he hadn’t smiled in a long while. He didn’t look twenty-one. Erik felt a stab of guilt deep in his chest for putting more lines on that face than it was ever meant to have. 

Finally, he nodded, shaking his hand from Erik’s grip and pressing two fingers against Erik’s temple. Erik closed his eyes, felt the cool contact of Charles’s mind against his. It was no longer warm, no longer joyful. He was unnerved to find that it felt almost like Emma, cold and calm and aloof, riffling through his mind like it was so many pieces of information, not the collective conscious of a living breathing person. The touch lasted only a handful seconds, but when Charles pulled away, his eyes were wet. 

“You see?” Erik said. 

“I do.” 

“And?”

Charles took a breath. “And it’s okay.” 

Erik’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Okay?”

“It’s okay,” Charles repeated. “Don’t feel sorry. I’m okay.” 

He wasn’t making sense. Erik wanted him to know that what Erik had felt for him had been real. It had been the realest thing Erik had ever felt for anyone, and the bet had had nothing to do with that. 

“Charles, please.” He stepped closer, close enough that he could dip his head and touch their noses together. “I love you.” 

Charles shut his eyes. “Please don’t.” 

“You asked for the truth. That’s the truth.” He ached to reach out, to touch Charles’s hand or his face. His fingers twitched with the effort to remain still. “You know it is. You saw, inside my head.” 

For a long minute, Charles stood there in silence, unmoving, unspeaking. Erik watched him, traced every familiar line of that face and wished to God he had never met Sebastian, had never agreed to that stupid bet months ago. Part of him even wished he had never seen Charles in that bookstore in September, because at least then Charles wouldn’t be standing here, everything in his apartment packed away, the exhaustion and tired pain in his eyes enough to break anyone’s heart. 

Finally, his shoulders slumped, defeat written across his expression. “I did,” he whispered. “I know.” 

Erik felt his heart leap against his chest. “Then you know that it’s real. What we had—that’s real. It wasn’t an act, and we can—we could—”

“What?” Charles laughed humorlessly. “Pick up where we left off? Carry on as if nothing happened?”

“Well…” 

“Look, Erik.” Charles rubbed his eyes. “If there’s anything this whole experience has taught me, it’s that I’m not ready for a relationship, and neither are you.” 

“That’s not true,” Erik protested. 

“Really?” 

His answering look was resolute. “Really.” 

Charles studied him, his eyes narrowed. Erik looked him in the eye, needing to make him understand, to make him _see_. 

It was a long moment before Charles sighed and said, “Well, I’m not, and I’m not going to pretend I am. What your friend did, what he said—I’d never felt so humiliated in my life. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t seen it. My telepathy gives me a lot of perks, you know, and I’m usually a very good judge of character. But what you did…Even if some of it were real, I can’t. I can’t do that again, not so soon.” 

And Erik saw it then, in his eyes. He saw the walls that had gone up, automatic defenses against the hurt, and he saw the mistrust there where it hadn’t existed before. Charles was different, not only in his appearance but also in his head. In his heart. And those differences made a canyon Erik couldn’t leap, not now and perhaps not ever. Something had changed in him, and he couldn’t go back. _They_ couldn’t go back. 

The realization settled like a stone at the bottom of his stomach. He had to swallow hard before any words would come out past the lump in his throat. “So you’re leaving.” 

Charles nodded, went back to packing his files. “Next week.” 

Next week. So soon. Erik leaned against the desk behind him. “Where are you going?”

“England,” Charles replied promptly. “I’m going to study there, at Oxford.” 

Erik took a trembling breath. “So far. And you’re going to be a student again? I heard you defended your dissertation already. Congratulations.” 

At that, Charles’s eyes softened minutely. “Thank you. And yes, I’m going to be a student again. I’m planning on studying psychology.” His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Apt subject, don’t you think? Considering how little I actually seem to know about the human psyche.” Before Erik could even apologize, Charles shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t want to be nasty. I just…I want us to part on amicable terms. Could we do that?”

Amicable terms? How could they part calmly when all Erik wanted to do was grab Charles and beg him not to leave, beg him to let them try again and do better this time? He felt like a hole had been ripped open in his chest, a hole that nothing would fill ever again because it was shaped like Charles and no one else but Charles could fill it. But Charles was standing there looking so perfectly composed, looking determined and poised and strong, stronger than Erik would ever be. Charles was capable of walking away. 

Erik thought walking away might kill him. But what had Charles said? They weren’t ready. He was twenty-one, Erik twenty-two, with their entire lives ahead of them. Erik had never been in a serious relationship before, it was no wonder he’d fucked it up spectacularly. And Charles hadn’t known any better; Erik had been his— _God,_ Erik had been his first, and even now, he felt sick at the thought. Charles had trusted him enough to share his first time with him, and Erik had turned around and hurt him, badly. How could he trust Erik again? 

He couldn’t see a way forward. He had already taken enough from Charles. Now it was time to give. 

As much as it hurt to do it, he straightened up and forced a smile and held out his hand. There were a thousand things he wanted to say, none of them goodbyes, but what eventually came out was, “I’m glad I knew you, Charles.” 

Charles bypassed his hand and pulled Erik in for a crushing hug. He was warm and lean and beautiful in Erik’s arms, and Erik clung desperately to him, trying to memorize the way he felt, the way he smelled. He couldn’t breathe past the knot in his throat. 

“I’m glad I knew you, too, Erik,” Charles whispered in his ear, his voice choked. “Thank you.” 

When they pulled apart, there was nothing left to say. They gazed at each other for a long moment, neither of them willing to move. Erik knew if he walked out the door now, it would be for the last time. He stayed rooted to the spot, wanting to prolong the moment, to delay the end. 

Finally, Charles said gently, “I need to finish packing.” 

Erik glanced around. “Do you need any help? I could carry boxes downstairs.”

“No, thank you.” Charles smiled, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’ll be fine.” 

He wasn’t speaking only about the boxes, and they both knew it. After a moment, Erik moved for the door. He hesitated in the threshold, but there was nothing to say. He didn’t want to say goodbye. Above all, he wouldn’t say that. 

So he left without saying anything, left Charles in his study and in his packed-up apartment. He took the stairs down and exited out a back door in case security was looking for him. When he circled around the front, his car was gone, but it was easy enough to track it to where the valets had moved it out of the street. The keys were nowhere to be found. He revved up the engine with his hands and pulled away, away from the building, away from Charles. 

Something red under the passenger seat caught his eye. Charles’s scarf, he realized with a jolt. The one Raven had made for him, the one Charles had lent to him and never asked for back. He pulled into the nearest parking lot and parked. Unclipping his seatbelt, he leaned down and disentangled the scarf out from where it was jammed up under the seat. When he wound it around his neck, he could feel Charles’s fingers against his skin, hear his voice saying, _“This? My sister made it. She had a knitting phase a couple of years ago. I know it doesn’t look impressive, but it’s surprisingly warm. Here, try it.”_

He closed his eyes and turned the car off. Then he leaned his head against the steering wheel and just breathed for a long time.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [it was a red scarf semester](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1983507) by [Glacier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glacier/pseuds/Glacier)




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